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1 LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 



No. Tn, 



g UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. H 



J 



s> 



ON SOME DEFICIENCIES 



IN OUR 



ENGLISH DICTIONARIES, 



ON 

SOME DEFICIENCIES 

IN OUR 

ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

BEING 

THE SUBSTANCE OF TWO PAPEES 
READ BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY, 

KOV. 5, AND NOV. TQ, 1 85 7. 



BY 



RICHARD CHENEVIX TRENCH, D.D. 

BEAN OE WESTMINSTER. 




LONDON: 
JOHN W. PARKER AND SON, WEST STRAND. 

1857. 






tONDOK: 
SAVTLL AITD EDWABDS, EEINTEES, CHAKDOS STBEET, 
COVEITT GABDEW, 



ON 

SOME DEFICIENCIES IN OUE 
ENGLISH DICTIONAEIES. 



THE course which was adopted by the Philological Society 
at the conclusion of its last session, with a view of re- 
moving some of the imperfections, and supplying some of the 
deficiencies, of our English Dictionaries, is known to many, 
probably to nearly all of its members. Many, too, are aware 
of the general acceptance with which the scheme has been 
received, as one at once practical and full of promise ; of the 
large amount of co-operation which has been freeiy tendered 
both from members of the Society and from others, so that 
we may reasonably hope that the results will not fall short 
of expectation. Taking a lively interest in this effort, 
I have asked permission to read a paper which will enter 
somewhat more fully into the subject of the omissions 
needing to be supplied, than was possible in the necessarily 
brief statement circulated a few months ago ; which will 
also confirm the assertions therein made by a certain number 
of proofs ; as many as those brief limits of time, by which 
I also am shut in, will allow. 

At the same time let me before commencing make one 
observation. Some of those willing to co-operate in this 
scheme have already transmitted to the Secretary the first 
instalments of their work, the result of their investigations 
up to the present time. He will probably ere long lay before 



2 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

you some specimens of these the first-fruits of that harvest 
which we hope to gather in. I have, however, thought it 
right to abstain from looking at any portion of these, partly 
as being unwilling even to seem to employ for a private end 
contributions made for a more public object ; but with the 
further advantage, that I am thus able to shew, that it needs 
no such combined effort of many to make palpable our 
deficiencies, however it may need this to remove them ; but 
that any one who is not merely and altogether a guest 
and stranger in our earlier literature, has in his power 
to bring forward abundant evidence even from his single, 
and it may be slenderly furnished treasure-house, of the 
large omissions which it is desirable to supply. 

The plan which I propose to follow in treating my 
subject will be this. Remembering the excellent maxim of 
the Schoolmen, Generalia non pungunt, I shall deal as little 
as possible with these generals, shall enter as much as I 
can into particulars in proof of my assertion. Such a course, 
indeed, will be attended with a certain inconvenience, which 
is this : the fact that the vocabulary of our Dictionaries 
is seriously deficient can only be shown by an accumulation 
of evidence, each several part of which is small and com- 
paratively insignificant in itself; only deriving weight and 
importance from the circumstance that it is one of a multi- 
tude of like proofs ; while yet it will be impossible within 
the limits of one paper, or even of two, to bring more than 
comparatively a very small portion of this evidence before 
you. Neither my limits, nor your patience, would admit of 
more. This inconvenience, however, I cannot avoid. Even 
as it is, I fear I shall put your patience to the trial. Per- 
haps I shall make the smallest demands upon it at all 
consistent with my subject, by grouping the materials which 
I wish to present to you according to the following arrange- 
ment. 

Our Dictionaries then appear to me deficient in the 
following points ; I do not say that there are not other 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 3 

points likewise, but to these I would desire at present to 
direct your attention. 

I. Obsolete words are incompletely registered; some in- 
serted, some not; with no reasonable rule adduced for the 
omission of these, the insertion of those other. 

II. Families or groups of words are often imperfect, some 
members of a family inserted, while others are omitted. 

III. Oftentimes much earlier examples of the employ- 
ment of words exist than any which our Dictionaries have 
cited ; indicating that they were earlier introduced into the 
language than these examples would imply; and in case of 
words now obsolete, much later, frequently marking their 
currency at a period long after that when we are left to 
suppose that they passed out of use. 

IV. Important meanings and uses of words are passed 
over ; sometimes the later alone given, while the earlier, 
without which the history of words will be often maimed 
and incomplete, or even unintelligible, are unnoticed. 

V. Comparatively little attention is paid to the distin- 
guishing of synonymous words. 

VI. Many passages in our literature are passed by, which 
might be usefully adduced in illustration of the first intro- 
duction, etymology, and meaning of words. 

VII. And lastly, our Dictionaries err in redundancy as 
well as in defect, in the too much as well as the too little ; 
all of them inserting some things, and some of them many 
things, which have properly no claim to find room in their 
pages. 

Such are the principal shortcomings which I find in 
those books on which we must ever chiefly rely in seeking 
to obtain a knowledge of our native tongue. I must 
detain you one moment before I proceed to my proofs, and 
I will employ that moment in expressing my earnest trust 
that nothing which I shall say may even seem inconsistent 
with the highest respect, admiration, and honour, for the 
labourers, whether living or dead, in this field of English 

B 2 



4 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

lexicography. It is comparatively easy to pick a hole here, 
or to detect a flaw there ; to point out stones, it may be 
many stones, in the way, which ought to have been built 
up into the wall; but such edifices as our great English 
Dictionaries could only have been reared by enormous 
labour, patience, and skill : and the same somewhat close 
examination which detects these little blemishes, and dis- 
covers these omissions, which shews us, what we might 
have guessed before, namely, that they underlie the infirmity 
common to all other works of man's hands, does to a far 
greater extent make us conscious how vast the amount is 
of that labour, patience, and skill which they embody. 

To come, then, now to my proofs. And yet before these 
proofs can be considered to prove anything, I must ask you 
to be at one with me in regard of what the true idea of 
a Dictionary is, what it ought to include, and what to 
exclude. If we are not agreed in this, much that is adduced 
may seem beside the mark. I will state, then, very briefly 
what my idea of a Dictionary is, hoping to find that it is 
also yours ; and if not, endeavouring to persuade you to 
make it yours, as that which on fuller deliberation alone 
commends itself to your minds. 

A Dictionary, then, according to that idea of it which 
seems to me alone capable of being logically maintained, is 
an inventory of the language : much more indeed, but this 
primarily, and with this only at present we will deal. It 
is no task of the maker of it to select the good words of a 
language. If he fancies that it is so, and begins to pick 
and choose, to leave this and to take that, he will at once 
go astray. The business which he has undertaken is to 
collect and arrange all the words, whether good or bad, 
whether they commend themselves to his judgment or 
otherwise, which, with certain exceptions hereafter to be 
specified, those writing in the language have employed. 
He is an historian of it, not a critic. The delectus ver- 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 

borum, on which so much, on which nearly everything in 
style depends, is a matter with which he has no concern. 
There is a constant confusion here in men's minds. They 
conceive of a Dictionary as though it had this function, to be 
a standard of the language ; and the pretensions to be this 
which the French Dictionary of the Academy sets up, may 
have helped on this confusion. It is nothing of the kind. 
A special Dictionary may propose to itself to be such, to 
include only the words on which the compiler is willing to 
set the mark of his approval, as being fit, and in his judg- 
ment the only fit, to be employed by those who would write 
with purity and taste. Of the probable worth of such a 
collection I express no opinion. I will only say that I cannot 
understand how any writer with the smallest confidence in 
himself, the least measure of that vigour and vitality which 
would justify him in addressing his countrymen in written 
or spoken discourse at all, should consent in this matter to 
let one self-made dictator, or forty, determine for him 
what words he should use, and what he should forbear from 
using. At all events, a Dictionary of the English language 
such a work would not have the slightest pretence to be 
called. What sort of completeness, or what value, would a 
Greek lexicon possess, a Scott and Liddell, from whose 
pages all the words condemned by Phrynichus and the 
other Greek purists, and, so far as style is concerned, many 
of them justly condemned, had been dismissed ? The lexi- 
cographer is making an inventory ; that is his business ; he 
may think of this article which he inserts in his catalogue, 
that it had better be consigned to the lumber-room with 
#11 speed, or of the other, that it only met its deserts when 
it was so consigned long ago; but his task is to make his 
inventory complete. Where he counts words to be needless, 
affected, pedantic, ill put together, contrary to the genius 
of the language, there is no objection to his saying so; on 
the contrary, he may do real service in this way: but let 



b ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

their claim to belong to our book-language be the humblest, 
and he is bound to record them, to throw wide with an im- 
partial hospitality his doors to them, as to all other. A 
Dictionary is an historical monument, the history of a 
nation contemplated from one point of view, and the wrong 
ways into which a language has wandered, or attempted to 
wander, may be nearly as instructive as the right ones in 
which it has travelled : as much may be learned, or nearly 
as much, from its failures as its successes, from its follies as 
from its wisdom. 

The maker, for example, of an English Dictionary 
may not consider ' mulierosity/ 1 or ' subsannation/ 2 or 
'coaxation/ 3 or l ludibundness/ 4 or ' delinition/ 5 or c sep- 
temfluous/ 6 or ' medioxumous/ 7 or l mirificent/ 8 or 'pal- 
miferous/ 9 or 'opime/ 10 or a thousand other words of a 
similar character which might be adduced (I take all these 
from a single work of Henry More), to contribute much to 
the riches of the English tongue ; yet has he not therefore 
any right to omit them, as all these which I have just 



1 " Both. Gaspar Sanctus and he tax Antiochus for his mulierosity 
and excess in luxury." — H. More, Mystery of Iniquity , b. 2, c. 10, § 3. 

2 " Idolatry is as absolute a subsannation and vilification of God as 
malice could invent." — Id. ih. b. 1, c. 5, § 11. 

3 " The importunate, harsh, and disharmonious coaxations of frogs." 
— Id. ib. b. 1. c. 6, § 16. 

4 " That ludibundness of nature in her gamaieus and such like sportful 
and ludicrous productions." — Id. ib. b. 1, c. 15, § 14. 

5 " The delinition also of the infant's ears and nostrils with the spittle." 
— Id. ib. b. 1, c. 18, § 7. 

6 " The main streams of this septemfluous river [the Nile]." — Id. ib. 

b. 1, c. 16, § n. 

7 " The whole order of the medioxumous or internuntial deities." — 
Id. ib. b. 1, c. 12, § 6. 

8 " Enchantment Agrippa defines to be nothing but the conveyance of 
a certain mirificent power into the thing enchanted." — Id. ib. b. 1, 

c. 18, § 3. 

9 " The palmiferous company triumphs, and the Heavenly Jerusalem 
is seen upon earth." — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 6, § 18. 

10 "Great and opime preferments and dignities." — Id.ib. b. 2, c. 15, § 3. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 7 

adduced, with a thousand more of like kind, have been 
omitted from our Dictionaries. 1 I will not urge that one or 
two in this list might be really serviceable (' mulierosity/ 
for instance, expresses what no other word in the language 
would do) ; but admitting them to be purely pedantic, that 
they would be quite intolerable in use, still they involve and 
illustrate an important fact in the history of our language, — 
the endeavour to latinize it to a far greater extent than 
has actually been done, the refusal on its part to adopt more 
than a certain number of these Latin candidates for admission 
into its ranks, — and, therefore, should not be omitted from 
the archives of the language. If, indeed, the makers of our 
Dictionaries had, by a like omission, put the same stamp of 
non-allowance upon all other words of this character, on 
all which to them seemed pedantic, inconsistent with the 
true genius of the language, threatening to throw too pre- 
ponderating a weight into one of its scales, this course, 
although mistaken, would yet have been consistent. But they 
have not done so. They all include, and rightly, a multitude 
of such words. But admitting these, such, for instance, 
as 'fabulosity/ 'populosity/ 'nidorous/ 'ataraxy/ f exi- 
conize/ 'diaphaneity/ — admitting these by the hundred, 
they had forfeited their right, were it only on the ground of 
consistency, to exclude such as I have just enumerated, not 
to say that the idea of a Dictionary demands their insertion. 
It is, let me once more repeat, for those who use a language 
to sift the bran from the flour, to reject that and retain 



1 It may be objected to this statement, that two or three of those 
above quoted are found in Johnson or in Todd ; they are so ; ' coaxa- 
tion,' for instance, which the latter defines as " the art of coaxing" ! but 
they are there without examples of their use ; and though I shall not 
often refer to such words, when I do I shall deal with them as words 
wholly wanting in our Dictionaries ; for to me there is no difference 
between a word absent from a Dictionary, and a word there, but unsus- 
tained by an authority. Even if Webster's Dictionary were in other 
respects a better book, the almost total absence of illustrative quota- 
tions would deprive it of all value in my eyes. 



8 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

this. They are to be the true Delia Cruscans : this title of 
furfur atores is a usurpation when assumed by the makers of 
a Dictionary, and their assumption of it can only serve to 
show how little they have rightly apprehended the task 
which they have undertaken. 

I proceed to support by evidence in each case the several 
complaints which I have made. 

I. In regard of obsolete words, our Dictionaries have no 
certain rule of admission or exclusion. But how, it may be 
asked, ought they to hold themselves in regard of these ? 
This question has been already implicitly answered in what 
was just laid down regarding the all-comprehensive cha- 
racter which belongs to them. There are some, indeed, who 
taking up a position a little different from theirs who 
would have them to contain only the standard words of the 
language, yet proceeding on the same inadequate view of 
their object and intention, count that they should aim at 
presenting the body of the language as now existing ; this 
and no more ; leaving to archaic glossaries the gathering in 
of words that are current no longer. But a little reflec- 
tion will show how untenable is this position; how this 
rule, consistently followed out, would deprive a Dictionary 
of a large part of its usefulness. Surely if I am reading 
Swift, and come on the word 'to brangle/ or light upon 
1 druggerman' in Pope, I ought to be able to find them in 
my Dictionary. Yes, it will perhaps be conceded, we will 
admit the few archaic words which are met with in writers 
so recent as Pope and Swift. But then if I find ' palliard' 
or ' mazer' in Dryden, must I be content to be ignorant of 
their meaning, unless besides my English Dictionary, I have 
another of the obsolete English tongue? Dryden's few 
archaisms, it is allowed, should find place. But I plead then, 
that in reading Jeremy Taylor I come upon 'dorter/ 
e spagyrical/ and other words, hard to be understood : 
surely I may fairly demand that my Dictionary shall help 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 9 

me over any verbal difficulties which I may find in Taylor ; 
and in this way I travel back to Shakespeare, to Spenser, to 
Gascoigne, to Hawes, to Chaucer, Wiclif, and at length 
to Piers Ploughman, Robert of Gloucester, or whatever 
other work is taken as the earliest in our tongue. It is 
quite impossible with any consistency to make a stand any- 
where, or to admit any words now obsolete without includ- 
ing, or at least attempting to include all. 

What I complain of in our Dictionaries is that they do 
not accept this necessity, and in its full extent. They all 
undertake to give the archaisms of the language, but all 
with certain reservations and exceptions. "Obsolete words," 
says Johnson, "are admitted when they are found in 
authors not obsolete, or when they have any force or 
beauty that may deserve revival/'' I will not pause here 
to inquire what a lexicographer has to do with the question 
whether a word deserves revival or not; but rather call 
your attention to the fact that Johnson does not even 
observe his own rule of comprehension, imperfect and in- 
adequate as that is. When the words omitted may be 
counted by hundreds, I suppose by thousands, it seems 
absurd, almost a weakening of one's case, to quote two or 
three, which yet is all that I can undertake to do. I have 
no choice, however, but to cite these. 'Grimsire/ or 
1 grimsir/ I meet everywhere in our old authors, in Mas- 
singer, in Burton, in Holland, 1 in twenty more, some of 
them certainly authors not obsolete, but he has not found 
place for it ; nor yet Richardson. This word, it may be 
pleaded, presents no great difficulty, though this would be 
no excuse for its omission; but here is ' hickscorner/ of 
which the meaning is anything but obvious : (the ' hick- 
scorner' is the loose ribald scoffer at sacred things) ; this 



1 " Even Tiberius Caesar, who otherwise was known iov&grimsir, and 
the most unsociable and melancholic man in the world, required in that 
manner to be salved and wished well unto, whensoever he sneezed." — 
Pliny, vol. 2, p. 297. 



10 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

word also, of continual recurrence in our old authors/ 
might be sought for vainly in our Dictionaries. If Milton 
uses ' jackstraw/ styling Salmasius " an inconsiderable fellow 
and a jac7cstraw," 2 why should I not know what a ' jack- 
straw' is, without recurring to some archaic glossary for 
this knowledge ? They indeed would not help me here, for 
the word is in none of them. 

Still less satisfactory is Richardson's rule of admission 
and exclusion. " Obsolete words," he says, " have been 
diligently sought for, and all such, but no other, as 
could contribute any aid to the investigations of etymology, 
as diligently preserved." But why those only which 
would " contribute aid to the investigations of etymo- 
logy?" why not those also which should enable us to 
measure in its length and breadth the intellectual territory 
which our English language has occupied as well as that 
which it occupies now, to form some estimate of its won- 
derful riches, as in other ways, so also by a contempla- 
tion of the enormous losses which it has endured without 
being seriously impoverished thereby ? Why not preserve 
all those obsolete words which are necessary to enable the 
student to read his English classics with comfort and with 
profit? In carrying out his scheme he has often omitted, 
and not without loss, archaic words which Johnson or 
Todd has inserted. Thus I observe 'lurry' (a word occur- 
ring in Milton and Henry More), ' privado' (in Fuller and 
Jeremy Taylor), and two I just noticed, 'druggerman' and 
c palliard/ duly registered and explained in their pages, but 
altogether omitted in his. 

Sometimes the word thus omitted is very curious. Thus 
no one of our Dictionaries, and I may say the same of our 
glossaries, contains the word 'umstroke/ which is yet 



1 " What is more common in our days than, when such hicTcscorners 
will be merry at their drunken banquets, to fall in talk of some one 
minister or other ?" — Pilkington, Exposition on Nehemiah, c. 2. 

2 Preface to The Defence of the People of England. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 11 

most noteworthy, being, as it is, the sole survivor of its 
kind. For while there is abundant evidence that our early 
English derived largely from the Anglo-Saxon the use of 
the preposition 'urn' or * iimbe* (=a//0i) in composition, 
(thus ' umgang/ ' umhappe/ ' umbeset/ and many more, for 
which see Halliwell), no single word with this prefix, ex- 
cepting only this one, has lived on into our later English ; 
which yet our Dictionaries, as I have said, have not 
observed, or, observing, have not cared to register. I incline 
to think they did not observe it ; for while most of Fuller's 
other works have been diligently used by our lexico- 
graphers, his Pisgah Sight of Palestine, one of his most 
curious and most characteristic, and in which ' umstroke , 
twice occurs, 1 has been, as far as my experience reaches, 
entirely overlooked by them. 

Not less curious from the other extreme of the language 
are the Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, words, which 
it has been endeavoured to transplant without alteration 
into English, but which have refused to take root here ; a 
record of the attempt to transplant which ought not the 
less to be preserved, while yet often it has not been. Thus 
Holland sought to introduce Aristotle's KififiiZ,, 2 though 
certainly our early English was rich enough in words to ex- 
press what is exprest by this, so rich that we have let drop 
more than half of them — c snudge/ ' curmudgeon/ ( gripe/ 
(not in our Dictionaries in this sense, but so used by 
Burton), ( pinchpenny/ ' clutch fist/ ' penifather/ ( nip- 



1 " Such towns as stand (as one may say) on tiptoes, on the very 
umstroke, or on any part of the utmost line of any map, (unresolved in 
a manner to stay out or come in), are not to be presumed placed accord- 
ing to exactness, but only signify them there or thereabouts." — Pt. i, 
b. i, c. 14 ; cf. pt. 2, b. 5, c. 20. 

2 " He that calleth a liberal man, wellknown to spend magnificently, 
a base mechanical humhix and a pinching penifather, ministereth 
matter of good sport and laughter to the party whom he seemeth so to 
challenge or menace." — Plutarch, p. 665. 



12 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

farthing-/ and many more. For Latin words, ' ardehV 1 
figures in Burton, 'semulus' 2 in Drayton, 'rex' in the 
popular phrase, "to play rex" s or to play the tyrant, but none 
of these in our Dictionaries. Sylvester, whose works, by 
the way, are a mine as yet very inadequately wrought for 
lexicographical purposes, constantly employs the Italian 
'farfalla' 4 for butterfly. 

Let me observe here that provincial or local words stand 
on quite a different footing from obsolete. We do not com- 
plain of their omission. In my judgment we should, on 
the contrary, have a right to complain if they were admitted, 
and it is an oversight that some of our Dictionaries occa- 
sionally find room for them, in their avowed character of 
provincial words ; when indeed, as sucJi, they have no right 
to a place in a Dictionary of the English tongue. I have 
placed an emphasis on " as such j" for while this is so, it 
must never be forgotten that a word may be local or 
provincial now, which was once current over the whole 
land. There are many such, which belonging once to the 
written and spoken language of all England, and having 
free course through the land, have now fallen from their 
former state and dignity, have retreated to remoter districts, 
and there maintain an obscure existence still; citizens 
once, they are only provincials now. These properly find 
place in a Dictionary, not, however, in right of what they 
now are, but of what they orice have been; not because 
they now survive in some single district, but because they 
once lived through the whole land. I regret the absence 



1 " Striving to get that which we had better be without, ardelios, busy 
bodies as we are." — Anatomy of Melancholy, pt. I, 2, 7, 7. 
2 " As this brave warrior was, so no less dear to us 
The rival of his fame, his only cumulus." 

Polyolbion, Song 18. 
3 " As helpers of your joy, not to domineer and play rex." — Eogebs, 
Naaman the Syrian, p. 2 17. 

4 "And, new farf alia, in her radiant shine, 

Too bold, I burn these tender wings of mine." 

The Magnificence. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 13 

of a number of these from our Dictionaries, and will in- 
stance a few. 

' Spong' is now a Suffolk, or, it may be, an East Anglian, 
word. Halliwell deals with it as thus provincial, and rightly 
describes it as " an irregular narrow and projecting part of a 
field;" corresponding, therefore, very nearly to the t sling/ 
1 slang/ or 'slinget/ of some of our Midland counties. 
Our Dictionaries know nothing of it ; nor should they take 
note of it on the score of its present provincial existence ; 
but they should on the ground that it once had free course 
in our literary English, being often used by Fuller. 1 Once 
more, take the verb 'to hazle/ Halliwell and Wright 
explain it rightly as " the first process in drying washed 
linen," and assign to it also East Anglia as the region 
where it is current ; but it was once not East Anglian, but 
English, as a noble passage, of which I cite a few words, 
from a great but little-known divine, will prove. 2 Then, 
once more, the verb c to flaite/ signifying to scare, to terrify, 
and standing in the same relation to f flit ' that ' fugare' 
does to ' fugere' — this may be, as our glossaries tell us, a 
word of the North Country now ; but it was a word of the 
whole country once, and as such should have found place 
not in our glossaries alone, but in our Dictionaries no less. 3 
1 To hopple' (the word is not in Richardson) , Todd gives as 
a northern word, and without example. Supposing he was 
right in saying so, he had no business to give it at all ; but 
he is not ; for it is employed by Henry More. 4 ' Dozzled' 
our archaic glossaries assign to the Eastern Counties, 



1 " The tribe of Judah with a narrow spong confined on the kingdom 
of Edom." — APisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 4, c. 2 ; and often. 

2 " Thou, who by that happy wind of thine didst Jiazle and dry up the 
forlorn dregs and slime of Noah's deluge, cause a new face of zeal and 
grace to appear upon our age, drunken and soaked with ease and sen- 
suality." — Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 886. 

3 " Desire God to flayte and gaster thee out of that lap and bosom, as 
Samson out of Dalilah's." — Id. ib. p. 877; cf. pp. 138, 453. 

4 " Superstitiously hoppled [i.e. entangled] in the toils and nets of 
superfluous opinions." — On Godliness, b. 9, c. 7, § 8. 



14 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IX 

and explain rightly as meaning stupid, heavy; but we 
should not have to seek it, or at least to find it, only in 
them ; Bishop Hacket employs it. 1 I believe a corn-sieve 
is still called a l try' 2 in some parts of England, a small 
enclosure a ' pingle/ 3 a pond a 'pulke/ 4 but the words had 
once nothing local about them, that they should be relegated 
to these collections, and found only in them. 

While I am thus dealing with obsolete words, and before 
leaving this part of my subject, let me say a word or two 
on w T hat the Germans call nebenformen (we have no word 
which exactly answers to this), and adduce a handful of 
these, in proof of the incompleteness with which they are 
given in our Dictionaries. It was once attempted to make 
an English word of c analysis/ and to speak of the f analyse:' 5 
examples of this I have before me in Henry More, Hacket, 
Rogers ; but our Dictionaries do not notice it. When ' big' 
was intended in the sense of proud, it often took the shape 
of e bog:/ 6 ' To ditch' 7 was current as well as ' to clutch/ 
1 corsive' no less than ' corrosive/ ' Flox' 8 was a variation 
of f flax' as well as f nix / it was applied like l flix' to the down 

1 " In such a perplexity every man asks his fellow, What's best to be 
done ? and being dozzled with fear, thinks every man wiser than him- 
self." — Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 142. 

2 " They will not pass through the holes of the sieve, ruddle, or try, 
if they be narrow." — Holland, Plutarch, p. 86. 

3 " The Academy, a little pingle or plot of ground, was the habita- 
tion of Plato, Xenocrates, and Polemon." — Id. ib. p. 275. 

4 " It is easy for a woman to go to a pond or pulke standing near to 
her door (though the water be not so good) rather than to go to a foun- 
tain of living water further off." — Kogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 842. 

5 " The analyse of it [a little tractate] may be spared, since it is in 
many hands." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 104. 

6 " The thought of this should cause the jollity of thy spirit to quail, 
and thy bog and bold heart to be abashed." — Eogees, Naaman the 
Syrian, p. 18. 

7 " If any of them be athirst, he hath an earthen pot wherewith to 
ditch up water out of the running river." — Holland, Xenophon's 
Cyropcedia, p. 4. 

8 " They dress it [their nest] all over with down feathers, or fine Jlox." 
—Id. Pliny, pt. 1, p. 288. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 15 

of animals. Like almost all other words of the same kind, 
' stick/ for instance, which varies with ' stitch/ ' belk' with 
'belch/ so ' prick' appears often as 'pritch/ 1 1 ruddle' 2 existed 
as well as l riddle' or ' raddle.' ' To wanze' is the constant 
form in which ' to wane' occurs in some of our writers ; 3 
our glossaries take notice of the word, characterizing it as 
a form of East Anglia, but it ought to find place in our 
Dictionaries as well. These last have f priestess/ but not 
' priestress/ 4 which is curious as having been evidently 
formed while the word was yet in that earlier shape, which 
survives in ' Pr ester John.' 

II. Families of words in our Dictionaries are often in- 
complete, some members inserted, while others are omitted; 
the family being really larger and more widely spread 
than they leave us to suppose. Thus ( awk/ which survives 
in our f awkward/ has not merely ( awkly/ but ' awkness/ 5 
which none of them have found room for. Coleridge, I 
am iaclined to believe, supposed he had formed upon 
' aloof the very serviceable word, f aloofness / but, though 
it has found its way into none of our Dictionaries, it also 
is two hundred years old. 6 f Nasute' should have been 



1 "The least word uttered awry, the least conceit taken, or jpr itch, the 
breaking in of a cow into their grounds, yea, sheep or pigs, is enough to 
make suits, and they will be revenged." — Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, 
p. 270. 

2 "The holes of the sieve, ruddle, or try." — Holland, Plutarch, 
p. 86. 

3 "Many bewrayed themselves to be time-servers, and warned away 
to nothing, as fast as ever they seemed to come forward." — Rogees, 
Isaaman the Syrian. 

4 "The jpriestress of Minerva, in Athens." — Holland, Plutarch, 
p. 866. 

5 " Come, my child, I see thou fearest thou shalt never get anything ; 
but look not thou at thine own awkness, look at the Lord's ease." — 
Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 378. 

6 " [God] stings him by unthankfulness of such as owe most love, by 
unfaithfulness and aloofness of such as have been greatest friends." — 
Id. ib. p. 95. 



16 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

completed with ' nasuteness ; l 'fume* and ' furnish ' with 
' fumishness ; 2 ' verb' and 'verbal' with f verbalist; 3 ' con- 
culcate/ as its legitimate consequence, has ' conculcation/ 4 
If ' quadripartite/ why not ' quadripartition / 5 if l afterwit/ 
why not ( afterwitted/ 6 as an epithet applied to those who deal 
in ( hadiwist/ (had-I-wist) or wisdom which always arrives 
too late for the occasion — a more pregnant word than should 
be willingly lost sight of? If ' say' as equal to essay or 
proof, why not also 'sayman/ 7 above all, with Bacon's 
authority for its use ? 

Again, if our Dictionaries find room, as they ought, for 
' kex/ the old English name for hemlock, (or one of them 
rather, for only Richardson has it), why not also for ' kexy' ? 8 
if ' fitch/ another form of vetch, is admitted, why not also 



1 " All which, to any man that has but a moderate nasuteness, cannot 
but import, that in the title of this sect that call themselves the Family 
of Love, there must be signified no other love than that which is merely 
natural or animal." — H. Moee, On Godliness, b. 8, c. 2, § 2. 

2 " Drive Thou out of us all fumishness, indignation, and sen-will." 
— Coveedale, Fruitful Lessons (Parker Soc. ed.), p. 284. 

3 ■'" The frothy discourses of empty verbalists." — Gell, Essay 
toward the Amendment of the English Translation of the Bible, 
1659, Preface. 

" Yet not ashamed these verbalists still are, 
From youth, till age or study dims their eyes, 
To engage the grammar rules in civil war." 

— Lobd Beooke, On Human Learning. 

4 " The conculcation of the outward Court of the Temple by the 
Gentiles." — Heney Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 12, § 1. 

5 " The quadripartition of the Greek Empire into four parts." — Id. 
ib. b. 2, c. 8. § 3. 

6 " Our fashions of eating make us slothful and unlusty to labour and 
study, .... aftenoitted (as we call it), incircumspect, inconsiderate, 
heady, rash." — Tyndale, Exposition of Matthew vi. 

7 " If your lordship in anything shall make me your sayman, I will 
be hurt before your lordship shall be hurt."— Letter to the Earl of 
Buckingham. 

9 " The earth will grow more and more dry and sterile in succession 
of ages ; whereby it will become more Jcexy, and lose of its solidity." — 
H. Moee, On Godliness, b, 6, c. 10, § 3. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 17 

f fitchy 1 ?' if they find place for f fog' (I mean in the sense 
of rank grass) , they should do so for ' foggy/ 2 stuffed with 
this rank grass, as well. ' Spendthrift' should have { spend- 
thrifty / 3 ' hispid' should be completed with ' hispidity/ 4 
' specious' with ' speciosity/ 5 and though one may not be 
in love with ' sordidity/ 6 yet, since BurtGn uses it, there is 
no ground for its omission. Why again ' maleficent/ and 
not also c maleficence / 7 ' sanguinolent/ and not e san- 
guinolency/ 8 'flowret/ and not ' flowretry / 9 ' fashion/ 
and not ' fashionist ;' 10 f prowl' and ' prowler/ without 
'prowlery/ 11 'brim' (in the sense of fierce, vehement), and 



1 " Each board had two tenons fastened in their silver sockets, which 
sockets some conceive made fitchy or picked, to he put into the earth ; 
which we rather believe flat and firm, standing fast on the surface of the 
ground." — Fullee, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 4, c. 4. 

2 " Those who on a sudden grow rather foggy than fat by feeding on 
sacrilegious morsels, do pine away by degrees, and die at last of incurable 
consumptions." — Id. ib. pt. 1, b. 3, c. 12. 

3 " Spendthrifty, unclean, and ruffianlike courses." — Rogees, Naa- 
man the Syrian, p. 611. 

4 " The hispidity, or hairiness of his skin." — H. Moee, On Godli- 
ness, b. 3, c. 6, § 5. 

5 " So great a glory as all the sjpeciosities of the world could not 
equalize." — Id. ib. b. 4, c. 12, § 4. 

6 " Weary and ashamed of their own sordidity and manner of life." 
— Bueton, Anatomy of Melancholy , pt. 3, 2, 5, 3. 

7 " The Bishop of Lincoln felt it, who fell into trouble, not for want of 
innocence, but for want of a parliament to keep him from maleficence." 
— Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 85. 

8 " That great red dragon with seven heads, so called from his san- 
guinolency." — H. Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 1, e. 8, § 4. 

9 " Nor was all this flowretry, and other celature on the cedar, lost 
labour, because concealed." — Fullee, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, 
pt. 1, b. 3, c. 5. 

10 « ^y e ma y conce i ve many of these ornaments were only temporary, 
as used by the fashionists of that age." — Id. ib. pt. 2, 6, 4, § 7. 

11 " Thirty-seven monopolies, with other sharking prowleries, were 
decried in one parliament." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, 
pt. 1, p. 51. 

C 



IS ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

not ' brimly ; n ' gingerly/ that is, youngherly, and not 
1 gingerness' 2 also ? 

Many verbs, such as ' to ease/ ' to merit/ ( to extirp/ the 
older form of ( to extirpate/ have substantives formed on 
them — ' easer/ 3 c meriter/ 4 ' extirper/ 5 If it be urged that 
this is assumed of course, and that it therefore is super- 
fluous to note them, I cannot assent to this explanation of 
their absence; and seeing that ' forfeit er/ 'lapper/ c thirster/ 
and other little-used words of the same formation, are 
introduced, there is at least an inconcinnity in omitting these, 
as they have been omitted by tens and by hundreds. 

But further, to work back from later formations to earlier, 
on which they are superinduced, and which they not merely 
pre-suppose as possible, but which actually exist. If ' sorti- 
legious' is admitted, ' sortilege' 8 should be so as well; if 
' pervicacious/ then 'pervicacy/ 7 which it assumes, and 
which has been in actual use, should not be left out, as it is 
by Richardson, and, which is the same thing, left without an 
example by Todd; ' garish 3 should not stand without 'gare/ 8 
nor ' soporous ' and ' soporiferous/ without ' sopour/ 9 



1 " A man sees better, and discerns more brimly his colours." — Put- 
TENHam, Art of Poetry, p. 256. 

2 " It is a world to consider their coyness in gestures, . . . tlieir gin- 
gerness in tripping on toes like young goats." — Stubs, The Anatomy 
of Abuses, 1585, p. 42. 

3 Kogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 40. 4 Id. ib. p. 341. 

5 " Founders of states, lawgivers, extirpers of tyrants, fathers of the 
people, were honoured." — Bacon, Of the Interpretation of Nature. 

6 " I have good hope that as the gods in favour have directed this 
sortilege, so they will be present and propitious unto me." — Holland, 
Livy,?. 1 183. 

7 " The Independents at last, when they had refused with sufficient 
pervieacy to associate with the Presbyterians, did resolve to show their 
proper strength." — Sylvestee, Life of Richard Baxter, p. 104. 

8 " The multitude hastened in a fell and cruel gare to try the utmost 
hazard of battle." — Holland, Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 412. 

" In a gare and heat they will run, ride, and take any pains; but only 
so long as the pang holds." — Eog-ees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 390. 

9 " To awake the Christian world out of this deep sopour or lethargy. 
— H. Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, Preface to the Second Part. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 19 

c Exearnincatioix' stands in Todd (it is not in Richardson) 
without f excarnificate/ 1 from which it grew; in like manner 
we have ( dehonestation/ but not the verb { to dehonestate/ 2 
which yet is employed by Jeremy Taylor ; ( fellowfeeling/ 
but not the verb ' to fellowfeel/ 3 

The designation of a female person, by changing f er' 
into ' ess/ as ' flatterer/ c natteress/ or by the addition of 
'ess/ as c captain/ 'captainess/ was once much more 
common than it is now. The language is rapidly abdicating 
its rights in this matter. But these forms, though now 
many of them obsolete, are very indicative of the former 
wealth of the language, and have good claim to be regis- 
tered. I have noted the following : f buildress/ 4 c captainess/ 5 
' natteress/ 6 ' intrudress/ 7 f soveraintess/ 8 which have not 
so been. 

1 "What [shall we say] to the racking and excamificating their 
bodies, before this last punishment?" — Id. ib. b. 2, c. 15. 

2 " The excellent and wise pains he took in this particular no man can 
dehonestate or reproach, but he that is not willing to confess that the 
Church of England is the best reformed Church in the world." — 
Sermon preached at the Funeral of the Lord Primate. 

3 " We should count her a very tender mother which should bear the 
pain twice, and fellowfeel the infant's strivings and wrestlings the 
second time, rather than want her child." — Rogees, Naaman the 
Syrian, p. 339. 

4 "Sherah,the daughter of Ephraim the younger, the greatest buildress 
in the whole Bible." — Fullee, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 1, 
b. 2, c. 9. 

5 " Dar'st thou counsel me 

From my dear captainess to run away?" 

— Sie P. Sidney, Astrophel and Stella, 88. 

6 " Those women that in times past were called in Cypres, Colacides, 
i.e.Jlatteresses." — Holland, Plutarch, -p. 86. 

7 " Joash should recover his rightful throne from the unjust usurpation 
of Athaliah, an idolatrous intrudress thereinto." — Fullee, A Pisgah 
Sight of Palestine, pt. 2, b. 3, c. 10. 

8 " O second honour of the lamps supernal, 
Sure calendar of festivals eternal, 
Sea's soveraintess, sleep-bringer, pilgrim's guide, 
Peace-loving queen." 

— Sylvestee, Du, Bartas. Fourth Day of the First Week. 
c 2 



20 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

A vast number of diminutives exist in the language, 
which have never found their way into our Dictionaries. 
Here are eight with a single termination : ( wormling/ 1 
'loveling/ 2 c dwarfling/ 3 c chasteling/ 4 (= eunuch), ' time- 
ling/ 5 'setting/ 6 'niceling/ 7 

Adjectives in f en/ of the same formation as our still 
existent ' brazen/ ' earthen/ l wheaten/ and noting, like the 
Greek adjectives in ivog, the stuff or material of which any- 
thing is made, have been far more numerous than our Dic- 
tionaries would imply. I can only adduce these four, ' eldern/ 8 
f tinnen/ 9 l yarnen/ 10 ( wispen/ 11 as having found no place 
in them ; but am disposed to think many more will yet be 



1 " O, dusty wormling ! dar'st thou strive and stand 

With heaven's high Monarch ? wilt thou (wretch) demand 
Count of his deeds ?" 
— Id. The Imposture. 

2 " These frolic lovelings fraighted nests do make." — Id. ib. 

3 " When the dwarfling did perceive me." — Id. The Woodman s 
Bear, 33. 

4 " It [Matthew xix.] entreateth of three kinds of chastetings" — 
Becon, Contents of St. Matthew's Gospel. 

5 " Divers ministers, which are faint-hearted, and were, as it seemeth, 
but timelings." — Id. The Supplication. 

6 " Such as be newly planted in the religion of Christ, and have taken 
no sure root in the same, are easily moved as young settings." — Id. 
Preface to Various Tracts. 

7 " But I would ask these meetings one question, wherein if they can 
resolve me, then I will say, as they say, that scarfs are necessary, and 
not flags of pride." — Stubs, The Anatomy of Abuses, 1585, p. 42. 

8 " Her chiefest pride is in the multitude of her suitors, and by them 
she gains; for one serves to draw on another, and with one at last she 
shoots out another, as boys do pellets in eldern guns." — Sib Thomas 
Oyeebuey, Characters. An Ordinary Widow. 

9 " Thy tinnen chariot, shod with burning bosses, 

Through twice six signs in twice six twelve months crosses." 
— Sylvesteb, Du Bartas. Fourth Day of the First Week. 

10 " A pair of yarnen stocks to keep the cold away." 

— Tubbeville, Letter out of Muscovy. 

11 " She hath already put on her tvispen garland." — Gr, Habvey, 
Fierce s Supererogation, Archaica, vol. 2, p. 149. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 21 

found. It is only in the Supplement to Richardson that 
1 stonen' has for the first time made its appearance. 

I must class under this rubric words which appear in our 
Dictionaries as subsisting only in one part of speech, when 
indeed they are two or more. Thus they have ' a snag/ 
but not ' to snag/ 1 — Todd, indeed, has the word, but as 
provincial, and giving no example of it. ( To snig/ 3 
(another form of the word) is entirely wanting. They have 
' cinder/ but not, with Gascoigne, l to cinder / 3 ' ignoble/ 
but not, with Lord Bacon, ' to ignoble / 4 ' unactive/ but 
not f to unactive/ 5 And then, reversing the case, we find 
in them ' to cancel/ but not l a cancel/ 6 with Jeremy 
Taylor ; f to strut/ and ' a strut/ while ' strut/ 7 as an 
adjective, is wanting; so, too, is ' diary/ 8 they have 
' pleasant/ but not 'a pleasant' 9 = a buffoon. The omis- 
sions in this kind are indeed innumerable. 

I might have found a fitter opportunity for noticing, yet, 



1 " Beware of snagging and snarling at God's secrets." — Rogees, 
Naaman the Syrian, p. 14; cf. p. 291. 

2 " Others are so dangerously worldly, snigging and biting, usurers, 
hard and oppressing." — lb. id. p. 211. 

3 " where sword and cindring flame 

Consume as much as earth and air may frame." 

— The Fruits of Wars. 

4 " Ignobling many shores and points of land by shipwreck." — A 
Discourse in praise of Queen Elizabeth. 

5 " The fatness of their soil so stuck by their sides, it unactived them 
for foreign adventures." — Fullee, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, b. 2, 
c. 10. 

6 " Whose spirit desires no enlargement beyond the cancels of the 
body, till the state of separation calls it forth into- a fair liberty." — 
Life of Christ, pt. 3, sect. 13, § 9. 

7 " He beginneth now to return with his belly strut and full." — 
Holland, Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 213. 

8 " The offer of a usurpation, though it was but as a diary ague." — 
Bacon, Letters, 83. 

9 " They bestow their silver on courtesans, pleasants, and flatterers." 
— Holland, Plutarch, p. 169. 

" Ridiculous jesters 3nad.pleasa?its" — Id. ib. p. 106. 



22 OX SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

rather than not notice at all, I will notice here that, while 
we have a vast company of energetic words, formed as 
' telltale/ l spitfire/ l spendthrift/ still current among us, a 
far larger company has past out of use, and of these many 
remain to this day unnoted in our Dictionaries. I instance 
the following: ( getnothing/ 1 'swillbowl/ 2 'pickpenny/ 3 
' nipfarthing/ 4 ' turntippet/ 5 Richardson indeed has ' to 
turn tippet/ but not the noun. 

III. Our Dictionaries do not always take sufficient care 
to mark the period of the rise of words, and where they 
have set, of their setting. The length of life which belongs 
to different words is very different, some describing much 
larger arcs than others. There are those which rose with 
the first rise of the language, and which, we may confidently 
prophesy, will always remain above the horizon. Others, 
rising as early, have already sunk and disappeared. Others 
rising later, will yet, so far as we can judge, continue so 
long as it continues. Others, again, describe far lesser arcs 
than any of these ; rising at a comparatively late period, 
they are already lost to our sight again ; they lived only the 
life of some single man ; or, it may be, used only once by 
him, their rising and their setting was at the same instant 
of time. But for all this, if their author and proposer was 



1 " Every getnothing is a thief, and laziness is a ' stolen water.' " — 
Adams, The Devil's Banquet, 1614, p. 76. 

2 " Wantonness was never such a swillhowl of ribaldry." — G. Haevet, 
Pierce's Supererogation, Archaica, vol. 2, p. 141. 

3 " He [the Pope] sending out and dispersing these birds of his to be 
his hungry picJcpennies throughout the whole pasturage of the empire." 
— H. Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 9, § 8. 

4 " I would thee not a nipfarthing, 
Nor yet a niggard have : 
Wilt thou, therefore, a drunkard be, 
A dingthrift and a knave ?" 

— Deant, The Satires of Horace, Sat. I. 
5 " The priests, for the most part, were doublefaced, turntippets, and 
flatterers." — Ceanmee, Confutation of Unwritten Verities. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 23 

anything better than one of that rabble of scribblers who 
hang on the skirts of literature, doing their worst to 
profane and degrade it and language which is its vehicle, 
these words should not on this account the less find place 
among those archives of a language which it is the business 
of a Dictionary to preserve. Now these arcs, wider or 
narrower, which words describe, are well worthy of being 
measured, so far as they come within the scope of our 
vision; and our complaint is that adequate care has not 
been bestowed on this matter. 

It is in every case desirable that the first authority for 
a word's use in the language which occurs should be ad- 
duced; that the moment of its entrance into it, (that is, 
into the written language, for this only comes under our 
cognizance), the register of its birth, should thus be noted. 
Of course no Dictionary can accomplish this completely. 
Every lexicographer must be content to be often set right 
here, and to have it shown that earlier authority existed 
for a word than that which he assumed the earliest, till 
thus by repeated corrections something of an approach to 
complete accuracy in this matter is attained. But I doubt 
whether Johnson even so much as set this before him as an 
object desirable to be obtained. To a certain extent Todd 
evidently did so. Thus he has sometimes thought it worth 
his while expressly to note that authorities exist for a word 
earlier than any which Johnson has quoted; see for in- 
stance under the words, ' financier/ c canaille/ l privateer/ 
Richardson has accomplished far more than either in this 
matter; though, strangely enough, he sometimes goes 
back from the vantage ground which his predecessors had 
already occupied, and satisfies himself with a later 
authority, when they had furnished him ready to hand 
with an earlier, and therefore a better. It cannot be 
brought as any charge against him, the first deliberate 
and consistent worker in this field, that he has left much 
in it for those who come after him to accomplish. For 



2i ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

this is a work, as I have said, in which every one who 
engages will have for a long time to come to submit 
to innumerable corrections from those who succeed 
him. 

To bring a few instances in proof, — one might suppose 
from Richardson that the word ( scoundrel' first came up 
in the eighteenth century, for the first authority which he 
gives for it is Swift ; and in discussing its etymology he 
says, u the instances of its usage are so modern, that it 
seems difficult to connect it with an Anglo-Saxon origin." 
Johnson has here the advantage of him ; for he traces it 
back as far as Butler (Hudihras) ; but, in fact, ' scoundrel ' 
is much older than this, being found not merely in Beau- 
mout and Fletcher, but in Warner's Albion's England} 
which was first published in 1586. Take another example. 
Whatever merit there may be in the word ' witticism/ 
Dry den fancied he might claim for himself. " Pardon/'' he 
exclaims, as he uses it, if a new word ;" 2 and Todd explicitly, 
the others implicitly, allow his claim to have coined it. 
But so far from the word issuing first from his mint, as 
thus he implies it to have done, Milton had employed it 
some twenty years before. 3 

Our Dictionaries would leave us to suppose that ( com- 
mittee' arose about the period of our great Civil Wars ; but 
from Holland's Livyf published in 1600, we may learn that 
it was current nearly half a century before. Of ' econo- 
mize' Richardson observes, " the verb is now in common 
use," implying that it is quite of modern coinage; and 
Todd speaks of it as " of very recent usage ;" — an entire 



1 " That scoundrel or this counterfeit." — B. 6, c. 31. 

2 Preface to his State of Innocence. 

3 " Tis no great wonder that such a three-lettered man as you (Fur a 
Thief) should make such a witticism on three letters." — Defence of the 
English People, c. n. 

4 " The committees of the captives had audience granted them in the 
senate-house by the Dictator." — p. 468. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 25 

mistake ! it is as old as Milton. 1 ' Apostate/ or f apostate/ 
which form of the word lasted long, did not first come 
in about the time of the Reformation, as all our Dic- 
tionaries might lead us to conclude, but is in fact as old 
as Piers 'Ploughman? 

But if it be thus desirable to note in every case, so far 
as this is possible, the first appearance of a word, then all 
those tokens which will sometimes cleave to words for 
awhile, and indicate their recent birth, ought also to be 
diligently noted. None are more important in this aspect 
than what one may fitly call " marks of imperfect natu- 
ralization." Many words, as is familiar to us all, have only 
by degrees made themselves a home among us : denizens 
now, they were at first strangers and foreigners, and bore 
plainly on their fronts that they were so ; the foreign ter- 
mination which for a while they retained, but now have 
dropped, being commonly that which betrayed their alien 
character, their as yet imperfect adoption among us. It is 
clear that in no way is the date of a word's incoming 
likely to be more effectually marked than by the marking 
and adducing of passages in which it still wears its foreign 
aspect ; not to say that in other ways the history of a word 
is incomplete unless this be done. There has hitherto been 
comparatively little attention bestowed upon this point by 
any of our lexicographers, and, on the whole, less by 
Richardson than by his predecessors. They show us in- 
deed, either one or all, how 'pyramis' and 'pyramides' 
went before ' pyramid ' and f pyramids/ f statua J before 
i statue/ e preludium ' before ' prelude/ f caricatuiV before 
' caricature / that f phantasma/ ( classis/ ( syntaxis/ pre- 



1 " [Men] under tyranny and servitude, are wanting that power which 
is the root and source of all liberty, to dispose and (economize in the land 
which God has given them." — The Tenure of Kings and Magistrates, 
ad finem. 

2 " And whoso passed that point 

Was apostata in the ordre." — Line 667, 8. 



26 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

ceded { phantasm/ l class/ ' syntax/ with something more in 
the same kind ; but a vast number of examples, passed over 
by them, still remains to be noticed. Of these I propose to 
adduce a few. 

I will notice first some Greek immigrations, the time of 
whose incoming may in this way be pretty accurately noted ; 
but which have either escaped the attention of our lexico- 
graphers, or have seemed to them unworthy of note. "We 
should scarcely suspect ' biography' to be so recent as it 
is, were it not for the fact that Dryden continually uses 
1 biographia/ 1 ' Cynosura/ 2 employed by Hacket and Henry 
More, preceded ' cynosure / ' demagogi/ 3 employed also by 
Hacket, went before ' demagogues/ Bearing out the 
novelty of this last word in the middle of the seventeenth 
century, let me just remind you that Milton in his EIkovo- 
icXacrrrj^ finds in the use of ' demagogue^ in the Icon Basi- 
like, — (< this goblin word," as he calls it, — an argument that 
King Charles could not have been author of the work. 
f Chasma' 5 is employed by Henry More, long before ( chasm' 
was naturalized in our tongue. f Heros/ 6 too, is in constant 



1 " Biographia, or the history of particular men's lives, comes next 
to be considered." — Life of Plutarch. 

2 " The Countess of Buckingham was the cynosura that all the 
Papists steered by." — Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. i. p. 171; cf. 
Hexey Moee, immortality of the Soul, b. 3, c. 17, § 7. 

3 " Those noted demagogi were but hirelings, and triobulary rheto- 
ricians." — Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. i. p. 175. 

4 His words are so curious that, though quoted by Bichardson and 
referred to by Todd, I will append them here: — "Setting aside the 
affrightrnent of this goblin word [demagogue], for the King, by his 
leave, cannot coin English as he could money to be current, and it is 
believed this wording was above his known style and orthography, and 
accuses the whole composure to be conscious of some other author." — § 4. 

5 " Observe how handsomely and naturally that hideous and unpro- 
portionate chasma betwixt the predictions in the eleventh chapter of 
Daniel and the twelfth is in this way filled up with matters of weighty 
concernment." — Mystery of Iniquity, b. 2, c. 10, § 8. 

6 " But to return to the description of this heavenly heros: A sharp- 
edged sword is said to go out of his mouth." — lb., b. 2, c. 14, § 6. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 27 

use by him, and the plural is ' heroes/ a trisyllable, in Spenser. 
( Idioma' 1 occurs in the Heliconia, also in Drayton; f paral- 
lelogrammon ,3 in Holland, ' extasis' 3 in Burton, f prosodia' 4 
in Drayton, ' zoophyton' 5 in Henry More, ' epitheton' 6 in 
Foxe. 

I will now pass on to the Latin, dealing with all as such, 
whose terminations are such, and, Greek though they may 
be, have come to us through the Latin. f Chylus' 7 is fre- 
quent in Bacon, and, if the examples of ' chyle' in our Dic- 
tionaries are the earliest, preceded it by at least half a century. 
Jackson uses ' abyssus/ 8 Baxter and Henry More ' archiva ;' 9 
Worthington f diatriba; no Jeremy Taylor 'expansum; ni 



1 " Impartial judge of all save present state, 
Truth's idioma of the things are past." 

— Heliconia, vol. 3, p. 461. 

2 " Suppose, then, there be a figure set down in form of a tile, called 
parallelogrammon, with right angles A, B, C, D." — Plutarch, p. 1036. 

3 " In the same author is recorded Carolus Magnus' vision, an. 885, 
or extasis, wherein he saw heaven and hell." — Anatomy of Melancholy, 
pt. 3, § 4, 1. 2. 

4 " Every grammarian in this land hath learned his prosodia, and 
already knows all this art of numbers." — Apology for Rhyme. 

5 " A zoophyton may be rightly said to have a middle excellency 
betwixt an animal and a plant." — Mystery of Iniquity, b. 1, c. 9, § 3. 

6 " Alter the epithetons [these epithetons are ' horrible,' ' heretical,' 
* damnable,' and the like, applied to the doctrines of the Eeformation] 
and I will subscribe." — Boole of Martyrs, Second Examination of 
Julius Palmer. 

7 " Mists, smoke, vapours, chylus in the stomach." — Natural 
History, cent. ix. § 837. 

8 "This is a depth or abyssus which may not be dived into." — Com- 
mentaries on the Creed, b. 11, c. 19, § 6. 

9 " The Christians were able to make good what they asserted by 
appealing to these records, kept in the Koman archiva." — H. Moke, 
On Godliness, b. 7, c. 12, § 2. 

10 " That excellent diatriba upon St. Mark." — Preface to Medes 
Works, p. 1. 

11 " The light of the world in the morning of creation was spread abroad 
like a curtain, and dwelt nowhere, but filled the expansum with a dis- 
semination great as the unfoldings of the air's looser garment, or the 
wilder fringes of the fire." — The Miracles of the Divine Mercy; cf. 
Heney Moee, Mystery of Iniquity, b. 1, c. 5, § 7. 



28 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

Fuller ' interstitium ; n Chillingworth ' intervalla / 2 Henry 
More 'machina/ 3 Culvervvell ' philtrum ; H Burton 'spec- 
trum/ 5 ' Mummy/ not a Latin word, but coming to us 
through the low Latin, appears for some time as ' mummia/ 
still wearing its Latin dress. 6 

Sometimes we can only tell by aid of the plural that 
the word was once regarded as foreign, though now it is so 
regarded no more. Thus ' phalanx' 7 in the singular would 
tell us nothing, because this is the form which we have 
ultimately adopted ; but the plural ' phalanges/ instead of 
'phalanxes/ leaves no doubt that he who employed it 
regarded the word as a Greek one still. ' Cento' 8 in like 
manner is not indicative, but ' centones' is ; we may say the 
same of ' bisontes/ 9 as compared with 'bison/ ' Idea n0 leaves 
us doubtful, but 'idese* is decisive. ' Noctambulo/ which 



1 " There was an interstitium or distance of seventy years between the 
destruction of Solomon's and erection of Zorobabel's temple." — A Pisgah 
Sight of Palestine, pt. i, b. 3, c. 6. 

3 " They conceive that if they should have the good fortune to be taken 
away in one of these intervalla, one of these sober moods, they should 
certainly be saved." — Nine Sermons, p. 11. 

3 " Three such contextures shall one fatal day 
Ruin at once, and the world's machina, 
Upheld so long, rush into atoms rent." 

— On Godliness, p. 42. 

4 " Lucretius, a Roman of very eminent parts, which yet were much 
abated by a, philtrum that was given him." — Light of Nature, c. 17. 

5 " Lavater puts solitariness a main cause of such spectrums or appa- 
ritions." — Anatomy of Melancholy, part 3, § 4, 1, 2. 

6 Webstee, Yittoria Corombona, act 1, sc. 1. 

7 " Aforetime they had their battallions thick and close together like 
the Macedonian phalanges." — Holland, Livy, p. 286. 

8 " Centones are pieces of cloth of divers colours. . . . Metaphorically 
it is a poem patched out of other poems by ends of verses." — L. Vives, 
Augustine's City of God, b. 17, c. 15, note. 

9 " Neither had the Greeks any experience of those neat or buffles, 
called uri or bisontes." — Holland, Pliny, pt. 2, p. 323. 

10 " Socrates and Plato suppose that these idea be substances separate 
and distinct from matter." — Id., Plutarch, p. 813. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 29 

for a long time did the duty which f somnambulist* does 
now, and was thoroughly naturalized in Arbuthnot's time, 
for he speaks of c noetambuloes' (see Richardson), was 
plainly far from so being in Donne's, for whom the plural 
of it is f noctambulones.' 1 And to take example of a single 
Italian word ; ' bravo' 2 being the form in which we have 
ultimately made this word our own, has no information for 
us ; but where ' bravi,' and not ' bravoes,' appear as the 
plural, this marks it for him who so used it as Italian still. 

It must at the same time be freely acknowledged that 
these are not perfectly infallible signs ; that one writer will 
still deal with a word as a stranger, and lead us to suppose 
it so, while another, who wrote earlier, had already treated 
it as an homeling. Thus I find c depositum' 3 used by more 
writers than one, and that a considerable time after Lord 
Bacon had employed l deposit/ Some, too, persisted in 
constantly using l hostia,' 4 long after l host' was completely 
adopted in the language. 

There are many other ways nearly related to this one, by 
which the date of a word's first appearance may be approxi- 
mately gained ; passages by aid of which we may pretty 
confidently affirm that, at the time they were written, the 
word was not in existence : these also I should desire to 
see gathered in. Thus if Sir Walter Raleigh speaks of 
" strange visions which are also called panici terrores"* it 
is tolerably plain that the word c panic' was not yet 
recognized when he wrote. Or take this quotation from 
Hacket's Life of Williams : 6 li When wars broke out, they 



1 " They say that our noctambulones, men that walk in their sleep, 
will wake if they be called by their names." — Sermon 46, p. 467. 

2 "Hired fencers, called bravi." — Moeison, Itinerary, pt. 2, p. 25. 

3 " They [precious souls] are laid up as a rich depositum in the hand of 
a Saviour." — Culveewell, TJie Worth of Souls ; cf. Rogees, Naaman 
the Syrian, To the Reader. 

4 Thus Moeison, Itinerary, pt. 3, p. 32, and passim. 

5 History of the World, b. 3, c. 6, § 1. 

6 Pt. 2, p. 182. 



30 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

crept out of their crannies like the cimici in the houses of 
Italy, out of rotten bedsteads ;" — can I doubt that the ugly 
English equivalent for 'cimici' had not yet obtained the 
name by which we know it now ? The word indeed existed, 
but not our present appropriation of it. 1 

Once more — I meet in a book published in 1659/ the 
following passage : "But all these owned a TroXvOua/jiog, a 
plurality of gods." I am not very rash in concluding that 
in 1659 ' polytheism' had not yet found its way into the 
language. Or again if I find ' acme' written in Greek cha- 
racters, as I do in South, in Culverwell, 3 and again in 
Phillips' excellent Preface to his New World of Words* if 
in addition to this I find it also explained, I have right 
to assume, that in the middle of the seventeenth century 
1 acme' was not yet naturalized in our tongue, although the 
time of its naturalization could not be far. off. Or, once 
more, if. I notice that at a certain epoch of the language not 
one but many writers employ c individuum,' 5 where we should 
speak of an l individual,' I am justified in concluding that 
however, as an adjective, it may have been for some time 
current among us, it had not gained an independent ex- 
istence, and a noun substantive's right to stand alone. 
Bacon's use of it as equivalent to ' atom' is merely technical. 

Neither ought a Dictionary to neglect what one may call 
the negative assistances (they are often no more than hints), 



1 We have further proof of this in such a passage as the following : — 
" Do not all as much and more wonder at God's rare workmanship in 
the ant, the poorest bug that creeps, as in the biggest elephant ?" — 
Rogees, Naaman the Syrian, p. 74. 

2 Gell, Essay toward the Amendment of the English Transla- 
tion of the Bible, p. 336. 

3 The Light of Nature, c. 4. 

4 " The Latin language was judged not to have come to its ok/zj?, or 
nourishing height of elegance, until the age in which Cicero lived." 
— 3rd ed. 1 67 1. 

5 " He cannot possibly mean that every individuum should give his 
suffrage." — Culveewell, The Light of Nature, c. 4. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 31 

by a careful observation, and judicious use of which, it will 
very often be possible to fix a time when some word certainly 
did not as yet exist; while with the period of its non- 
existence in this way firmly established, and the field of 
inquiry thus effectually narrowed, there will be little diffi- 
culty in designating the exact time when it first showed 
itself in the language. For example, if I find a writer 
treating of a matter which presents every inducement to 
employ a certain word, and notwithstanding this, in no 
single instance employing it, I argue with more or less 
confidence that the word was not then in being. Thus if 
I read page after page in Holland's Pliny, where every 
temptation exists to employ the word c sculptor/ for the 
author whom he is translating, is treating at great length, 
and one by one, of the famous sculptors of antiquity, while 
instead of this he constantly employs ' imager/ I gather 
not a certainty, but a very strong conviction, that ' sculptor/ 
at the time he wrote, was not in being ; as I am persuaded 
from other evidence it was not, nor till the middle of the 
seventeenth century. Dryden is the first authority for it in 
our Dictionaries, though earlier than he might be adduced. 
Again, if I find various devices resorted to by the writers 
at the beginning of that same century to express a tract 
of land almost surrounded by sea, so that they employ 
' biland/ 1 ' demi-isle/ ' demi-island/ 2 I am able without 
much hesitation to affirm that c peninsula' was not yet 
ackowledged to be English. The use of c engastrimyth' 
makes the existence of ventriloquist at the same time, I will 
not say impossible, but certainly improbable. All passages 
yielding hints of this kind should be sedulously watched 
for and preserved. 



1 " From hence, a great way between, is that liland, or demi-isle, 

which the Sindi inhabit." — Holland, Ammianus Marcellinus, p. 200. 

" In the Eed Sea there lieth a great demi-island named Cadara, so 

far out into the sea that it maketh a huge gulf under the wind." — 

Id. Pliny, pt. I, p. 235. 



32 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IX 

Yet here, too, it must be freely acknowledged that all 
such conclusions are open to error; as it must ever be, 
where the proofs are rather negative than positive. Thus, 
if frequently meeting with the word ' counterpoison ' in the 
writings of Holland, which I have quoted so often (Richard- 
son has it not, and Johnson only a late example of it), I 
should therefore conclude that ' antidote ' did not yet exist ; 
his own pages would be sufficient to convince me of error. 
The employment of that excellent Saxon phrase, ' ear-shrift/ 
by our early Reformers (it is not in our Dictionaries), might 
easily tempt us to believe that ' auricular confession ' was of 
later invention, which, however, is by no means the case. 

I have dwelt so long on the importance of noticing the 
rise of words, and the helps by which this may be done, 
that I must be very brief in respect of their setting. Yet, 
if a Dictionary should thus carefully indicate the moment 
of their first appearance above the horizon, it should, in 
case of those again withdrawn from our sight, note with 
the same diligence the moment of this disappearance; 
giving, that is, or endeavouring to give, in the case of each 
obsolete word, the latest instance of its employment ; that 
so, as we saw it in the cradle, we may also follow it, where 
dead, to the grave. When I say that this is desirable, that 
this is to be aimed at, it must of course be allowed at once 
that it is difficult, nay, impossible ever to affirm that we 
have adduced the latest instance of a word's use. It is 
always possible that a later may be produced. Still, that 
which may be regarded as the ideal perfection in this 
matter may be approached nearer and nearer ; and as long 
as passages are producible later than the latest hitherto ad- 
duced, this ideal perfection is not approached as nearly as 
it might be. 

Here, too, it may very well be a question whether Johnson 
set this before him at all; or, indeed, there can be no 
question that he did not. Neither has Todd concerned 
himself for the last use of words so much as for the first. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 33 

Richardson has made it much more an object. Still in this 
matter also of watching a word's final exit much remains 
to be accomplished. Thus, the latest example, indeed the 
only one, which Richardson' gives of ' unease ' (the word 
is not at all in Johnson), is from Chaucer. We might 
thus be led to conclude that ' unease' had vanished out of 
the language at a very early date ; but it occurs as late as 
the middle of the seventeenth century, 1 nearly three centuries 
later than the date which he seems to assign to it. Many 
other words he would leave us to conclude had a briefer 
existence than was actually the case. They have perished, 
it is true; but still they were not so short-lived as his 
quotations would imply. Out of a large number of such, I 
will only cite one or two. ' Unidle' 2 (not in Todd), one might 
suppose from Richardson, had not outlived Chaucer : it 
was still good English in the time of Sidney. Of ( unlusty' 
(in like manner not in Todd), no later authority occurs in 
Richardson than Gower : the word is employed by Tyndale 
and by Holland. 3 

There are some who perhaps may urge that all this is 
trivial and of little importance. I cannot agree with them. 
A word's birth may not be as important as a man's birth ; 
but a biography which should omit to tell us when he was 
born whose life it professes to record, would not, in my 
mind, be a whit more incomplete in its kind than is the 
article in a lexicon which makes no attempt to fix, where 
there are any means for doing so, the date of a word's first 
appearance in the language. And as with birth, so also with 
death. Where a word is extinct, not to note, where this is 
possible, the time of its extinction, seems in its way as 
serious an omission as in the life of a man not to tell us the 



1 " What an unease it was to be troubled with the humming of so 
fcaany gnats." — Hacket, Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 2, p. 88. 

2 " For me, I do nature unidle know." — Astrojphel and Stella, 26. 

3 " He [tlae hippopotamus] waxeth unlusty and slow." — Ammianus 
Marcellinus, p. 213. 

D 



34 OX SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

time, when that can be ascertained, when that life was 
ended. 

IV. Our Dictionaries might note more accurately than 
they do, and illustrate by suitable quotations, the earlier 
uses which words have now left behind them, the successive 
modifications of meaning through which they have passed. 
It is one of the primary demands which we make upon a 
Dictionary, that it should thus present us with the history of 
words, the significant phases of meaning through which they 
have travelled. It was a remark of Coleridge, that you might 
often learn more from the history of a word than from the 
history of a campaign ; and this is true. Johnson is very 
faulty here; perhaps in nothing more so. Nothing is 
commoner with him than to take the last meaning at which 
a word has arrived, the ultimate result, and to put this first 
and foremost, either quite over-passing, or placing last, the 
earlier uses which alone render the latter intelligible. The 
difficulties and confusions which are thus introduced into 
any attempt at an accurate and historical study of the lan- 
guage are scarcely capable of exaggeration. Turn, for 
instance, to the first word in which it was at all easy for 
him to go wrong, the word ' to abandon •/ all the meanings 
which he gives, or which his citations bear out, are secondary 
or tertiary ; the primary he does not once touch ; and thus 
fails to put ' abandon ' in any intelligible relation with 
' bann/ ' bannum/ which lies at the foundation of it. 

Richardson has bestowed far more attention on this part 
of his task than his predecessors, and not seldom the series 
of quotations by which he illustrates the successive phases 
of meaning through which a word has passed is singularly 
happy. Still, with all his superiority, I do not find him 
always careful in this matter to embody and preserve what 
his forerunners had won, sometimes going back from a point 
which they had already attained. Thus I find notices in 
Johnson or Todd, with good illustrative examples, of the 
following uses of words, which I look for vainly in him; 'fenii- 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 35 

nine' in the sense of effeminate; 'thought* in that of 
anxiety 1 (important as clearing our Translators from a charge 
of mistranslation at Matt. vi. 25, 27, often brought against 
them) ; ' vivacity* in that of longevity, * misery* in that of 
stinginess, c temperament* in that of ' temperamentum* or 
compromise, ' formality* in its strictest logical significance. 
But these and other omissions must not rob him of the 
honour of having here done much, although still leaving 
much to be accomplished by those who come after. 

I will proceed by quotations, which, if few, shall yet be 
sufficient, to make good my assertions. I cannot then find 
that any of our Dictionaries take notice of ' metal* used 
in the sense of the Latin ' metallum* or mine, which is 
yet a favourite employment of the word with Jeremy 
Taylor. 2 In like manner he employs ' symbol* 3 in the sense 
which the Greek <xu/xj3oXov sometimes had, namely, the 
contribution which each person at a pic-nic throws into the 
common stock. 'Firmament,* 4 too, he uses, and Bacon as 
well, in the sense which (TTEpiu)jua has in profane Greek, 
in Aristotle's sense, not that of the Septuagint. Our 
Dictionaries do not notice 'sure* 5 in the sense of affianced; 



1 Let me add a still better example of this : " In five hundred years 
only two queens have died in childbirth. Queen Catharine Parr died 
rather of thought:' — Tracts during the Beign of Queen Elizabeth, 
Somers' Tracts, vol. 1, p. 172. 

2 " It was impossible to live without our king, but as slaves live, that 
is such who are civilly dead, and condemned to metals." — Ductor 
Dubitantium, Epistle Ded. 

3 " Christ hath finished his own sufferings for expiation of the world, 
yet there are portions that are behind of the sufferings of Christ, 
which must be filled up by his body, the Church, and happy are they 
that put in the greatest symbol; for in the same measure you are par- 
takers of the sufferings of Christ, in the same shall ye be also of the 
consolation." — The Faith and Patience of the Saints. 

4 " Custom is the sanction or the firmament of the law." — Apples 
of Sodom. 

5 " The King was sure to Dame Elizabeth Lucy, and her husband 
before God."-- Sib T.Moee, History of King Richard III. 

d2 



36 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

nor ( clumsy' 1 in its early sense of stiff with, cold ; nor 
f deplored" 2 in the Latin sense of ' deploratus,' namely, given 
over by physicians; nor ' desired' 3 in the sense of regretted ; 
nor ( penury' 4 in that of penuriousness ; nor c spinster' 5 
in that of woman of ill life, sent therefore, or liable to be 
sent, to the spinning house. None of them have noticed 
that a ' whirlpool' 6 is not the name merely of a pool which 
whirls ships, but also of a fish which whirls pools. They 
are altogether astray about the meaning of ' lumber/ which 
is properly the ' Lombard's' or pawnbroker's shop/ and then 
the goods deposited there. 8 

1 " The Carthaginians followed the enemies in chase as far as Trebia, 
and there gave over, and returned to the camp so clumsy and frozen 
[ita torpentes gelu in castra rediere] as scarcely they felt the joy of their 
victory." — Holland, Divy, p. 425. 

2 ' ' Physicians do make a kind of scruple and religion to stay with the 
patient after the disease is deplored; whereas in my judgment they 
ought, both to acquire the skill, and to give the attendances for the 
facilitating and assuaging of the pains and agonies of death." — Bacon, 
Advancement of Learning, b. 2. 

3 " He [Jehoram] reigned in Jerusalem eight years, and departed 
without being desired." — 2 Chron. xxi. 20, Authorized Version. 

" She shall be pleasant while she lives, and desired when she dies." 
— J. Tatloe, The Marriage Ring. 

4 " God sometimes punishes one sin with another; pride with adultery, 
drunkenness with murder, penury with oppression, irreligion with 
blasphem} r ." — Id. TJie Faith and Patience of the Saints. 

5 " Many would never be indicted spinsters were they spinsters, nor 
come to so public and shameful punishments, if painfully employed in 
that vocation." — Fullee, Worthies of England, Kent; cf. Beaumont 
and Fletchee, The Prophetess, Act 3, sc. 1. 

6 " The Indian sea breedeth the most and the biggest fishes that are ; 
among which the whales, and whirlpools called balsenae, take up in length 
as much as four acres or arpens of land." — Holland, Pliny, p. 235. 

" The ork, whirlpool, whale, or huffing physeter." — Stlvestee, Die 
Bartas, First Day of the First Week. 

7 " They put up all the little plate they had in the lumber, which is 
pawning it, till the ships came." — Lady Mubbay, Dives of George 
Daillie and Dady Grisell Baillie. 

8 " And by an action falsely laid in trover, 
The lumber for their proper goods recover." 

— Butlee, Upon Critics. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 37 

V. Oar Dictionaries pay comparatively little attention to 
the distinction of synonymous words. It would manifestly 
be desirable to see included in their pages all the best and 
aptest passages which serve to distinguish any word from 
the synonyms with which it is likely to be confounded, 
either by felicitous opposition, or by avowed discrimination, 
and which assign to each the province which is properly its 
own. No good Latin Dictionary would omit Cicero's dis- 
tinction between 'prudentia^ and 'sapientia/ 1 'furor' and 
'insania/ 2 ' malitia' and ' vitiositas/ 3 And in like manner 
what a remarkable feature in the new German Dictionary 
now being published by the two Grimms, are the frequent 
and laborious discussions on synonymous words, with illus- 
trative quotations. They are in almost every case of singular 
interest ; as for instance when they treat on the difference 
between f Aar' and 'Adler;' 'Antlitz* and 'Angesicht;' 
'Becher/ f Glas' and 'Keleh;' < Butter/ l Schmalz' and 
' Anke/ { Degen/ and ( Schwert/ But this subject is in our 
own Dictionaries seldom even touched upon, and still more 
rarely is it sufficiently handled. I may, indeed, be deceived, 
for this is a point more difficult to bring to the proof than 
other assertions which I have made ; but my impression is, 
that the quotations chosen for their bearing on this matter 
are few and scanty, which is the more to be regretted, as we 
are greatly deficient in a comprehensive work on English 
synonyms ; the two best which we have, that of Taylor of 
Norwich, and that edited by Archbishop Whately, making 
no pretence to exhaust the subject. 

Yet it would not be very difficult to bring together a 
large and instructive collection of materials bearing on this 
subject, and they might constitute a feature of no less 
interest in our Dictionaries, than they do in that of the 
Grimms. Coleridge is eminently rich in such passages, 
and would yield a large harvest of them to any who would 



Be Of. i. 43. 2 Tusc. iii. 5. 11. 3 De N. D. in. 



33 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

be at the pains to seek them. Thus what Dictionary would 
not be a gainer by the citation of those passages from him 
in which he distinguishes between 'analogy' and 'meta- 
phor/ 1 ' fanaticism* and c enthusiasm/ 2 or, to take earlier 
examples, by that in one of Barrow's Sermons, in which he 
draws the line of demarcation between 'detraction' and 
'slander?' 

What clearness of insight well selected quotations of the 
kind I ask, would give into the exact force and value of 
words, which being nearly equivalent, are continually 
in danger of being accounted to be wholly so ; and bor- 
dering closely on one another, are liable to have their 
several limits confused. For instance, none of our Dic- 
tionaries trace clearly the line of demarcation between 
' docile' and ' docible/ treating them as merely convert- 
ible words ; and so do most of the authors whom they 
quote as employing them. But take this brief passage from 
Hacket: 3 "Whom Nature hath made docile, it is injurious 
to prohibit him from learning anything that is docille ;" 
and what possibility is there in any mind of confusing them 
any more, or of missing the fact that ' docile' is able to 
learn, and ' docible' able to he learned? Or take the words 
'safe' and 'secure/ and adduce, under one or other of 
them, as fixing their distinction, this passage from Jeremy 
Taylor : " We cannot endure to be disturbed or awakened 
from our pleasing lethargy, for we care not to be safe, but 
to be secure; not to escape hell, but to live pleasantly;" 4 and 
how excellently would a quotation such as this bring out 
the distinction — namely, that in ' safe' we have the objec- 
tive fact of freedom from peril expressed ; in ' secure' the 
subjective feeling and belief, true or untrue, of the same. 

And before leaving this subject of synonyms, let me 



1 Aids to Reflection, p. 198. 1825. 

2 Literary Remains, vol. 2, p. 365. 

3 Life of Archbishop Williams, pt. 1, p. 28. 

4 On Slander and Flattery, Serm. 24. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 39 

further note how desirable it would be that all important 
passages should be cited, which discuss in any way a word's 
relations to other words, not merely in its own language, 
but in any other. No Latin dictionary would pass by 
Cicero's observations on c vultus,' and the superiority of it 
to any Greek corresponding word, in that it sets out the 
countenance as the index of the mind, which, he affirms, 
no Greek one does ; l nor those in which he traces a like 
superiority in ' divinatio' over fiavTiKy]? in ( convivium' over 
(jvfnrodLov ; 3 nor would fail to quote what he says of 
f ineptus,' and the causes to which he traces, in such high 
Roman fashion, the absence of any corresponding word in 
the Greek. 4 Many such passages, unregistered as yet, our 
English literature must possess. 

VI. Many passages are passed by which might be use- 
fully adduced in illustration of the first introduction, ety- 
mology, and meaning of words. A good dictionary will 
mark itself by such happy quotations. There are passages 
for one cause or another so classical, in respect of certain 
words, that it would be a manifest defect if they were 
omitted ; such, for instance, as that upon e livery' in Spenser's 
View of the State of Ireland, given in both our Dictionaries. 
Indeed, very much in this kind has been brought together 
already, but much more remains to be done. He would be 
utterly unreasonable who should urge as a fault that all 
has not here been accomplished. The literature of our 
language is so vast, so far exceeding the compass of any 
one man's power to embrace it all, that innumerable pre- 
cious quotations must escape the single-handed student; 
even when he inherits the labours of others, who, single- 
handed as himself, have wrought in this almost boundless 
field. Although, therefore, in no spirit of fault-finding, I 
may still say that I should fain see cited in our Dictionaries, 

1 De Legg. i, 9, 27. 2 De Divin. I, 1. 

4 De Or at. 2, 4, 17. 



40 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

and in a perfect one there would be cited, all such passages 
as the following : — 

a. Passages which give an account of, or implicitly serve 
to mark, the first introduction of a word into the language, 
or first use of it in an entirely new sense. As no good 
Latin Dictionary would omit, under ' favor/ at least a 
reference to Quintilian's quotation from Cicero's Letters, 
marking the date of its first use, under ' unio' that from 
the elder Pliny, 1 which notes the exact moment at which 
it was first applied to pearls in which all the higher perfec- 
tions of the pearl were centred and met, so neither ought 
our Dictionaries to omit passages of a similar value. This 
from Heylin's Animadversions on Fuller's Church History? 
marks the exact moment when ( plunder* entered into the 
language : " Plunder, both name and thing, was unknown 
in England till the beginning of the war, and the war began 
not till Sept., An. 1642." Up to the middle of the seven- 
teenth century our good writers use ' self-homicide/ never 
1 suicide/ The following ineffectual protest against the 
word marks pretty nearly the date of its introduction : 
" Nor less to be exploded is the word suicide, which may as 
well seem to participate of sus a sow, as of the pronoun sui. ,,s 
In Evelyn's Diary 41 we have a notice that ( opera' is about 
to establish itself in our language, perhaps the first appear- 
ance of it therein; the quotation at any rate is earlier 
than any which our Dictionaries furnish : " Bernini, a 
Florentine sculptor, architect, and poet, a little while before 
my coming to the city gave a public opera (for so they call 
shows of that hind) wherein he painted the scenes, &c." 

The word ' negoce/ which by the way is not in any of 
our Dictionaries, as neither is ' negotious/ 5 nor ' negotious- 



1 Hist. Nat 9. 35, 56. 2 P. 196. 

3 Phillips, New World of Worlds, 3rd ed. 1671, Preface. 

4 Rome, Nov. 19, 1644. 

5 " Some servants, if they be set about what they like, are very nimble 
and negotiovs" — Kogeks, Naaman the Syrian, p. 309. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 41 

ness, n has failed to gain a footing in the language ; yet, 
consistently with the principles everywhere laid down in 
these pages, I should desire to see it noted, and with it 
Bentley's defence of it against the cavils of Boyle. It is 
a curious passage : u The words in my hook which he 
excepts against are commeiititious, repudiate, concede, aliene, 
vernacular, timid, negoce, putid, and idiom ; every one of 
which were in print hefore I used them, and most of them 
before I was horn. Why may we not say negoce from nego- 
tiant, as well as commerce from commercium, and palace from 
palatium ? Has not the French nation been beforehand with 
us in espousing it ? and have not we negotiate and nego- 
tiation, words which grew upon the same root, in the com- 
monest use?" 2 

j3. Again, I would fain see cited the chief passages in 
our literature, as many as occur, which consciously discuss, 
or unconsciously reveal, the etymology of a word, the 
rationale of a name. Here, too, there is a gleaning for 
later labourers quite equal, I should imagine, to the harvest 
which the earlier have gathered. Thus, under ' furlong/ I 
would not despise such a passage as the following : (X A 
furlong comes next to be considered, so called quasi furrow- 
long, being so much as a team in England plougheth going 
forward, before they return back again." 3 Once more — 
we are all aware why the ( wallnut* is so called ; still under 
the word this passage, again from Fuller, might fitly be 
cited : " Some difficulty there is in cracking the name 
thereof. Why wallnuts, having no affinity to a wall, whose 
substantial trees need to borrow nothing thence for their 
support. . . . The truth is, Gual or Wall to the old Dutch 
signifieth strange or exotic (whence W^elsh, that is, 
foreigners), these nuts being no natives of England or 



1 " God needs not our negotiousness, or double diligence, to bring his 
matters to pass." — Id. ib. 606. 

2 Preface to the Dissertation upon Phalaris, p. liv. 

3 Eulleb, A Pisgah Sight of Palestine, pt. 1, b. 1, c. 13. 



42 OX SOME DEFICIENCIES IX 

Europe, and probably first fetched from Persia, because 
called Nux Persique in the French tongue." 1 

c Aureola/ though adopted at an early day into the lan- 
guage, and a word familiar to our old divines, is not in any 
of our Dictionaries. Let us, however, suppose it there, and 
it is evident that the following citation from Donne should 
accompany it : " Because in their translation, in the Vul- 
gate edition of the Roman Church, they [the Roman 
Catholics] find in Exodus xxv. 25, that word aureolam, 
Facies coronam aureolam, Thou shalt make a lesser crown 
of gold, out of this diminutive and mistaken word they 
have established a doctrine that, besides those coronse 
aurese, those crowns of gold, which are communicated to all 
the saints from the crown of Christ, some saints have made 
to themselves and produced out of their own extraordinary 
merits certain aureolaes, certain lesser crowns of their own. 
. . . And these aureolaes they ascribe only to three sorts of 
persons, to Virgins, to Martyrs, to Doctors." 2 

y. Where the subject matter is abstruse, or in any way 
difficult, I would fain see all quotations made which contain 
happy definitions or explanations. Here, too, not as imply- 
ing that very much has not been done, but simply as showing 
by a few examples how much remains to be done, I bring 
forward the following. Richardson, under ' instinct/ has 
a rather poor definition of it from Beattie. Where, as in 
this case, a better is producible, it should clearly be pro- 
duced. This from Henry More appears to me a manifest 
improvement on that which Beattie has given : " That 



1 Worthies of England, Surrey. 

- Sermon 73. — Let me here observe, as a curious phenomenon of 
French scholarship, and an evidence that such a quotation as this would 
not be superfluous, that Didron, in his really valuable book, Iconogra- 
phie Chretienne, p. 109, makes 'aureola' a diminutive of 'aura,' a 
breath, this ' aureola' being so called, as he informs us, from its airy 
wavy character ; not to say that he is otherwise curiously astray on 
what the ' aureola' in Christian Art is, and what are its relations to the 
' nimbus.' 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 43 

there is sucli a thing therefore as instinct in brute animals, 
I think is very plain ; that is to say, that there is an in- 
stigation or impetus in them to do such things without 
counsel, deliberation, or acquired knowledge, as according 
to our reason and best consultation, we cannot but approve 
to be fittest to be done. Which principle in general Scaliger 
seems to parallel to divine inspiration. Instinctus dicitur 
a Natura, sicut a Diis afflatus/'' 1 

Richardson has only one quotation of a few lines from 
Hobbs, to illustrate ' common sense' (the others have none), 
a well-selected passage, if it had occupied a second or third 
place ; but, as the primary and only, failing to place the key 
to the true meaning of the word in the hands of the ordinary 
reader, who, if he thinks about the matter at all, almost 
inevitably assumes that ' common sense' is so called as 
being the sense common to all men who are not below the 
average intellect of mankind. Suppose this (it is again 
from Henry More) had also found place; it seems to me 
to tell, which that other does not, the story of the word : 
" That there is some particular or restrained seat of the 
common sense is an opinion that even all philosophers and 
physicians are agreed upon. And it is an ordinary com- 
parison amongst them, that the external senses and the 
common sense considered together are like a circle with five 
lines drawn from the circumference to the centre. Where- 
fore, as it has been obvious for them to find out particular 
organs for the external senses, so they have also attempted 
to assign some distinct part of the body to be an organ of 
the common sense ; that is to say, as they discovered sight 
to be seated in the eye, hearing in the ear, smelling in the 
nose, &c, so they conceived that there is some part of the 
body wherein seeing, hearing, and all other perceptions meet 
together, as the lines of a circle in the centre, and that there 
the soul does also judge and discern of the difference of the 
objects of the outward senses/' 2 

1 Immortality of the Soul, b. 3, c. 13. 2 lb. b. 2, c. 7. 



44 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

Let me instance one more example of what I would fain 
see done. Here is the word ' goodnature/ Johnson and 
Richardson take no notice of it ; Todd defines it thus : 
" Kindness, habitual benevolence, the most pleasing quality 
that a man or woman can possess." It is well known to 
every English scholar, certainly to every theological scholar, 
that by ' goodnature' our great divines of the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries meant something quite different from 
this ; that the word played not an unimportant part in their 
statements of the relations between nature and grace ; they 
including in it everything which it is possible for a man to 
have without having the grace of God; very much the 
eixpv'ia of Aristotle, the genial preparedness for the recep- 
tion of every high teaching. Suppose then that instead of 
the silence of Johnson and Richardson, and the weak 
babble of Todd, two or three such quotations as these had 
been appended to the word, the gain would have been 
considerable ; and first, this from Jeremy Taylor : " Good 
nature, being the relics and remains of that shipwreck which 
Adam made, is the proper and immediate disposition to 
holiness. When good nature is heightened by the grace of 
God, that which was natural becomes now spiritual." 1 But 
take in further explanation of i good nature 5 this from Bishop 
Sanderson : " Good nature ! alas, where is it? since Adam 
fell, there was never any such thing in rerum natura ; if 
there be any good thing in any man, it is all from grace. 
That thing which we use to call good nature is indeed but a 
subordinate means or instrument whereby God restraineth 
some men more than others from their birth and special 
constitution from sundry outrageous exorbitances, and so 
is a branch of this restraining grace whereof we now 
speak." 2 

VII. Our Dictionaries err in redundancy as well as 

1 Sermon preached at the Funeral of Sir John Dalstone. 
• Sermons, vol. I, p. 279. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 45 

defect. A Dictionary ought to know its own limits, not 
merely as to what it should include, but also what it should 
exclude. The fault may be as great of carelessly taking 
in foreign and extraneous matter, as of unduly rejecting 
that which properly belongs to it. Our early lexico- 
graphers, I mean those who preceded Johnson, from failing 
to recognize any proper limits to their work, from the 
desire to combine in it as many utilities as possible, 
present often the strangest medleys in the books which 
they have produced. These are not Dictionaries of words 
only, but of persons, places, things ; they are gazetteers, 
mythologies, scientific encyclopedias, and a hundred things 
more; all, of course, most imperfectly, even according to 
the standard of knowledge of their own time, and with a 
selection utterly capricious of what they put in, and what 
they leave out. Nor can it be said that we have yet 
wholly overlived this error; some of the Dictionaries in 
authority among us are deeply tainted with it, and none 
are wholly unaffected by it. The subject is one which I 
am unwilling to pass wholly by. It may seem, indeed, 
hardly included in my argument, which being the de- 
ficiencies of our English Dictionaries, undertakes to deal 
with the too little in them rather than the too much. Still, 
as I have asked that they should open their doors wide to 
receive a large company of words which hitherto they 
have declined or neglected to entertain, not to speak of 
other charges which I have sought to put upon them, I 
feel that it will not be out of place to show how room may 
be made for these incomers into their rightful inheritance, 
namely, by the expulsion of others who are mere in- 
truders and interlopers. Were it necessary that our Dic- 
tionaries should grow considerably in bulk, through the 
taking in of much which hitherto they have not taken in, 
I should acquiesce in the necessity, even while I felt the 
inconvenience. But, in regard of most of them, there is 
no such necessity. Let them throw overboard that which 



46 OX SOME DEFICIENCIES IX 

never had any claim to make part of their cargo, and they 
will find room enough for the more precious wares which 
they are specially bound to convey. 

The most mischievous shape which this error assumes, 
consists in the drafting into the Dictionary a whole army 
of purely technical words ; such as, indeed, are not for the 
most part, except by an abuse of language, words at all, 
but signs; having been deliberately invented as the no- 
menclature, and, so to speak, the algebraic notation of 
some special art or science, and having never passed the 
threshold of this, nor mingled with the general family of 
words. It is not unfrequently a barren ostentation which 
induces the bringing in of these, that so there may be 
grounds for boasting of an immense addition made to the 
vocabulary. Such additions are very cheaply made. No- 
thing is easier than to turn to modern treatises on che- 
mistry or electricity, or on some other of the sciences 
which hardly or not at all existed half a century ago, or 
which, if they existed, have yet been in later times wholly 
new-named — as botany, for example, — and to transplant 
from these new terms by the hundred and the thousand, 
with which to crowd and deform the pages of a Dictionary ; 
and then to boast of the vast increase of words which it 
has gained over its predecessors. The labour is little more 
than that of transcription, but the gain is nought; or, 
indeed, less than nought ; for it is not merely that half a 
dozen genuine English words recovered from our old authors 
would be a greater gain, a more real advance toward 
the completion of our vocabulary than a hundred or a 
thousand of these; but additions of this kind are mere 
disfigurements of the work which they profess to com- 
plete. Let such be reserved for a technological lexicon 
by themselves ; such a supplement to the Dictionary of the 
Academy has lately been published in France : but in a 
Dictionary of the language they are a pure incumbrance, 
troubling the idea of the book, occupying precious room 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 47 

to which they have no manner of claim, and which will be 
abundantly needed for that which has. 

It must be confessed that Johnson offends often and 
greatly in this point. There is hardly a page in his Dic- 
tionary where some word does not occur which has no 
business there. What has an English Dictionary to do 
with grammatical terms such as ' zeugma/ ' polysyndeton / 
with rhetorical, ' auxesis •* with medical, ' segilops/ ' parotis/ 
f ecphracticks/ ' meliceris/ ■ steatoma/ ' striatura f- with 
zoological, ' lamellated/ ( striae / with architectural, ' zocle/ 
' pentastyle f with botanical, ' polypetalous/ ' quadriphyl- 
lous/ ( dorsiferous / with l acroteria/ c alectryomancy/ ' or- 
thodromics/ and, I doubt not, one or two thousand more 
which might easily be culled from his pages ? all, in their 
places, if wanted, if well put together, very good ; but not 
in their places here. And then, as though these were not 
enough, Todd has thought it needful to add largely to their 
number; while "Webster has far outdone both. His Dic- 
tionary, while it is scanted of the barest necessaries which 
such a work ought to possess, affords in about a page and 
a half the following choice additions to the English lan- 
guage : — f zeolitiform/ ' zinkiferous/ ' zinky/ ' zoophy- 
tological/ ' zumosimeter/ e zygodactulous/ f zygomatic/ 
with some twenty more. I am reminded here of the 
hearty protest of a writer in the seventeenth century 
against the favour shown to these hideous exotics, coupled 
with the neglect of so much which has sprung from, and is 
racy of, our own soil. " It will," he exclaims, " well be- 
come those of us who have a more hearty love for what 
is our own than wanton longings after what is others, 
to fetch back some of our own words that have been 
jostled out in wrong, that worse from elsewhere might be 
hoisted in ; or else to call in from the fields and waters, 
shops and workhousen, that well fraught world of words that 
answers works, by which all learners are taught to do, and 
not to make a clatter Methinks this of all times 



4S ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

should be the time wherein, if ever, we should gather up 
those scattered words of ours that speak works, rather 
than to suck in those of learned air from beyond the sea, 
which are as far off sometimes from the things they speak, 
as they are from us to whom they are spoken." 1 

It is a notable merit in Richardson, that he has thrown 
overboard far the greater part of this rubbish, for rubbish 
in this place it has a right to be called. Still, even he 
does not draw rigidly enough the line of demarcation 
between words which belong to common English, and to 
special arts and sciences; between catholic and sectarian 
words. What, we may ask, does an English Dictionary 
want with ' tophaceous/ with l oedema' and ' cedematous/ 
' phagedenick/ and the numerous words which he supports 
by citations from Wiseman's Surgery ? In almost every 
case these are superfluous, and worse than superfluous. 

But are, it may be asked, no scientific words to find place 
in a Dictionary? The answer is easy. None but the 
following. Those, first, which have passed out of their 
peculiar province into more or less general use. In every 
branch of human study there are a certain number of 
these ; which have become, so to speak, the heritage of all 
intelligent men, whether they have been initiated into that 
special study or no. It will, of course, not always be easy 
to say exactly what these are, to draw the line which 
separates them from the abstruser terms of a science ; and 
no two lexicographers can be expected to draw the line so 
as exactly to include and exclude the same words ; yet this 
seems to me a sufficiently guiding principle in the adoption 
or rejection of these terms. Thus ' zenith/ ' nadir/ have 
plainly a right to a place, as ' almacantar' (Todd) plainly 
has none ; ' paronomasia' it would be absurd to reject, it 
is as absurd to include ' autonomasia.' Then, secondly, 



1 Fairfax, Bulk and Selvedge of the World. 1674. To the 
Reader. 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 49 

such technical and scientific words as, although they have 
not thus past into more or less general use, or at least 
general understanding, are scattered up and down our litera- 
ture ; I use literature here not in the sense of good books 
as distinguished from bad, but in its proper antithesis to 
science. Thus if Burton uses ' elegm/ and Jeremy Taylor 
' s P a g vr i s V these words must be admitted into the Dic- 
tionary; the mischievous error lies in swamping it with 
words which it is necessary to go to seek in special treatises, 
and which have never travelled beyond these. 

And as an English Dictionary ought not to include the 
technical words of different sciences, as little ought it to 
attempt to supply the place of popular treatises on the dif- 
ferent branches of human knowledge ; it must everywhere 
preserve the line firm and distinct between itself and 
an encyclopedia. Let the quotations yield as much in- 
formation as they can be made to yield, in subordination to 
their primary purpose, which is, to illustrate the word, and 
not to tell us about the thing ; and in the due and happy 
selection of these, so as, if possible, to combine both objects, 
the lexicographer may display eminent skill. Nor would 
any one object, if under some really difficult word, these 
citations did not exactly observe symmetrical proportion 
with other citations, but somewhat exceeded. 1 But what 
can be more absurd than diffuse descriptions from the com- 
piler's own pen, or from books which have no character of 
literature about them, of the plants, fruits, flowers, precious 
stones, animals, and the rest, whose names find place in 
his columns ? It is strange that Johnson's strong common 
sense did not save him from falling into this error ; but it 
has not. He might well have spared us thirteen closely 
printed lines on an opal, nineteen on a rose, twenty- 
one on the almug-tree, as many on the air pump, not 

1 I would instance the two passages in Oleabius' Travels (1669), 
one on ' coffee,' p. 240, and another on 'tea/ p. 241, as happy examples 
of this combination. 



50 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

fewer on the natural history of the armadillo, and rather 
more than sixty on the pear. All this is repeated by Todd ; 
and in an exaggerated form by Webster, from whom, for 
instance, we may learn of the camel, that it constitutes the 
riches of the Arabian, that it can sustain abstinence from 
drink for many days, and in all, twenty-five lines of its 
natural history. 

Again, there is a defect of true insight into what are the 
proper bounds and limits of a Dictionary, in the admission 
into it of the innumerable family of compound epithets, 
such as f cloud-capt/ f heaven-saluting/ l flower-enwoven/ 
and the like. Here, too, the rule is plain. When words 
have been brought into close connexion with one another, 
not in the choice or caprice of one writer, and on a single 
occasion or two or three occasions, but by the consenting 
use of many appear in constant alliance, being in this their 
recognized juxtaposition to all intents and purposes a single 
word, they may then claim their admission of right. Thus 
we ought not to look in vain for c hunchbacked/ ' light- 
headed/ ' lightfingered/ and such composite words as 
these. Where, on the contrary, words are not married, but 
only, as it were, kiss one another for an instant, and then 
part company again, it may be for ever, it is worse than 
mere waste of room to make a place for them. Johnson 
does so ; but in measure. Thus, having after ' cloud' in- 
serted f cloud-capt' and e cloud-compelling/ he holds his 
hand ; while Todd, in a sort of practical irony of his great 
predecessor, and shewing whither the principle which he had 
admitted would lead, adds seven more, which owe their 
whole existence to a hyphen ; ' cloud-ascending', ' cloud- 
born/ f cloud-eclipsed/ ' cloud-dispelling/ c cloud-kissing/ 
' cloud-topt/ ' cloud-touching/ each constituting an article 
by itself; and then Webster is a step still further in 
advance, having fifteen epithets, into which * heaven' enters, 
from ' heaven-aspiring' to f heaven-warring/ each of these, 
too, an independent article; while ' heart' is a component part 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 51 

of thirty-three. Here is in great part an explanation of the 
twenty thousand words which he boasts are to be found in 
his pages over and above those included in the latest edition 
of Todd. Admitting these transient combinations as though 
they were really new words, it would have been easy to 
have increased his twenty thousand by twenty thousand 
more. Richardson very properly excludes all these ; where 
he errs, it is perhaps in the opposite extreme, in neglecting 
some true and permanent coalitions. 

If it be argued here that by the rejection or expulsion of 
these we should lose some eminent beauties and felicities of 
the language, which have embodied themselves in these com- 
binations, and which deserve to be recorded, the answer is 
easy. In the first place, even if it were necessary to do so, 
they must still go, if they have no proper place in the work 
in hand. But it is not needful. Such of these epithets as 
are worth preserving may easily be preserved and incorpo- 
rated in the book by a quotation of the passage in which 
they occur, under one or other of the words of which they 
are composed ; or, better still, under that of the person or 
thing to which they are applied. He who would not lose 
sight of Shakespeare's ' heavy '-gaited toad/ or Sylvester's 
' opal-coloured morn/ or Marlowe's 'golden-fingered Ind/ 
would have two or three opportunities of introducing them 
into his Dictionary. 1 

A few words in conclusion, and with reference which I 
once more desire to make to the work which we ourselves 
have in hand. Some shortcomings have been pointed out 
in our Dictionaries, and though, taking them in all, they 
cannot be said to be few, yet the books from which they are 
chiefly drawn, as you will not have failed to observe, are 






1 It is very characteristic of the incompleteness which must attend 
every attempt to gather this innumerable army of compound epithets 
into a Dictionary, that not one of these three here named is to be found 
in Johnson, Todd, or Webster. 

E 2 



52 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

comparatively few; and even these books are capable of 
yielding infinitely more in this kind than they have here 
yielded. It is easy, then, to guess how much must remain 
behind. Indeed, how should there not? For let us only 
consider the immense extent of the literature of England, 
the number of books which compose it ; and how is it pos- 
sible for any single scholar, even with a large portion of 
his lifetime devoted to this one object, to bring within 
his own ken more than a very small proportion of these ? 
There are some single authors who would abundantly serve 
as a task of toil for a year, and that to the most industrious 
student. I am persuaded there are very few who would work 
through Holland's seven folios, large and small, so as they 
deserve and demand to be worked through for philological 
purposes, in a shorter time. The three folio volumes of 
Foxe's Boole of Martyrs would certainly of themselves occupy 
many months. What is the consequence of this enormous 
disproportion between the work to be done and the working 
power to accomplish it? The compiler of a Dictionary, 
hopeless to find himself in possession of the whole treasure 
in some books, of whose value he is yet too well aware to 
leave them altogether untouched, dips into them here and 
there; often with signal advantage to his work, but still 
not in this fulfilling the demands which the ideal Dictionary 
that floats before our eyes would make on its compilers. 
Thus Dr. Johnson, with characteristic truthfulness, tells us 
how he was compelled to supply the manifest deficiencies in 
preceding works of the kind " by fortuitous and unguided 
excursions into books, gleaning as industry should find, or 
chance should direct;" and congratulates himself on the 
success which attended these desultory forays. But it is 
evident that if by these much is brought away, very much 
more must be left behind ; nor can such irregular efforts ever 
yield that Lexicon totius Anglicitatis } which we justly desire. 
I seem to myself to trace clearest evidences of this random 
reading in the great work which Johnson has produced. Thus 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 53 

he quotes, not altogether unseldom, a work to which I have 
frequently referred, I mean Hacket's Life of Archbishop 
Williams ; yet it is quite impossible that he could have read 
it through, or nearly through ; for the book literally swarms 
with words which ought to find, but never have found, their 
place in a Dictionary. It is, indeed, a most curious medley in 
diction, singularly combining the two extremes of English ; 
being full on the one side of scholarly, oftentimes pedantic, 
Grsecisms, as c scleragogy/ 1 a word used by ascetics to express 
a severe handling of the body ; ' hecatontarchy;' Latinisms, 
such as ' consciuncle' 2 1 solertiousness/ 3 with a few Italianisms 
to boot ; ' bugiard' 4 and ' amorevolous/ 5 are examples in this 
kind; and on the other side, abounding with our most 
genuine Anglo-Saxon phrase; such words as ' may-lord/ 6 
' goll- sheaves/ 7 which one meets in no glossary or Dictionary 
(the last I only guess at the meaning of), with a vast 
number more of the same kind are to be found in his 
pages, but not one of them in Johnson, nor, as far as I can 
note, in our other Dictionaries. 

Something of the same sort I observe in Richardson. 
He has drawn, as he justly makes his boast in his Preface, 
a large number of books within the circle of his reading, 



1 " Not our Reformation, but our slothfulness, doth indispose us, that 
we let others run faster than we, in temperance, in chastity, in scleragogy, 
as it was called." — Pt. 2, p. 51. 

2 " Their rubrics are filled with punctilios, not for consciences, but 
consciuncles." — Pt. 1, p. 66. 

3 " Which abounded to the praise of Mr. Williams's solertiousness." 
— Pt. 1, p. 22. 

4 " Like an egregious bugiard, he is here quite out of the truth." — 
Pt. 1, p. 71. 

5 " He would leave it the Princessa to show her cordial and amorevo- 
lous affections." — Pt. 1, p. 161. 

6 " Not only such corrupt ones must needs decline faster than they 
got up, but the most circumspect who possess such a room as they did, 
will prove to be May-lords in Fortune's interlude." — Pt. 1, p. 40. 

7 " All the rest of the articles [i.e., of accusation] were goll-sheaves, 
that went out in a sudden blaze." — Pt. 2, p. 92. 



54 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

which, had never been employed for lexicographical purposes 
before ; and the virgin soil which he has tilled has often 
yielded him rich and large returns. Yet it lies in the 
necessity of things, in the limited capacities of any single 
man, that of the works which he uses, some, and those 
important ones, can have only been partially read. In a 
very small matter I find a curious evidence of this ; in the 
fact, namely, that he shares the impression of those who 
have gone before him, of Johnson and Nares, that the verb 
' to dade/ signifying to lead as one leads a child by the 
hand, is only to be found in Drayton. Indeed, he puts 
more emphasis into the assertion than any of his prede- 
cessors — ' ' a word," he says, " peculiar to Drayton" — a fact, 
prima facie, very unlikely, belonging, as it evidently 
does, to the old stock of the language; but singularly 
enough, he actually quotes in another part of his Dic- 
tionary, (s. v. ' runt'), some words of Holland's, which, if he 
had read three lines further, would have shown him that 
others, as well as Drayton, employed ' to dade/ 1 

Let me again say that these observations are not made 
in any spirit of detraction from works of immense and 
conscientious labour, but only as* pointing out what cannot 
but continually be, while art is so long, and life so short. 
And having touched on this theme, I will take the oppor- 
tunity of noting, in direct connexion with our subject, a 
serious omission on the part of many recent editors of our 
older authors, and one which must greatly diminish the 
worth of their labours ; this, namely, that they have failed 
to append to their editions a glossary of the rare and 
remarkable words which the works may contain, with a 
reference to the page where they occur. 2 I add this last 

1 " A man of years, who is a politician, must offer himself lovingly 
unto those that make toward him, and be glad to sort and converse with 
them ; such he ought to inform, to correct, to dade and lead by the 
hand." — PlutarcJi, p. 399. 

2 Let me further say that the glossary should be apart, in an index 
by itself, not scattered through the general index ; in which case it becomes 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 55 

clause, superfluous as it may seem ; because in some of the 
publications of the Parker Society, as, for instance, in the 
writings of Coverdale and Hutchinson, the provoking and 
tantalizing absurdity is committed of giving the rare words, 
or the words used in rare senses, but without a reference to 
enable the reader to discover the place where they occur. It is 
the same with the works of Bishop Hall, edited some thirty 
years ago by one bearing his own name. What student of 
English would not give much to have an efficient glossary of 
the twelve volumes of his works? But there, too, is a 
glossary without references, one, therefore, which is practi- 
cally useless. In glancing my eye over it, I saw various 
words, which, for one reason or another, I would most gladly 
have turned to. Useful, however, as the information might 
have been to me, life was not long enough for the perusal 
of twelve thick volumes to obtain this information, which, 
therefore, I was compelled to forego. To those who, in the 
act of editing, have become familiar with every page of a 
book, the labour of preparing such an index would be 
literally nothing; while the treasures which they would 
thus place at the disposal of the student of English phi- 
lology, treasures which he could only otherwise make his 
own by enormous labour, and labour which in most cases it 
is quite impossible for him to bestow, would be immense. 
Certainly, when one compares the way in which the classical 
works of Greece and Rome are edited with the slight and 
perfunctory editing of many among our own, the contrast 
does little honour to our zeal for our native tongue. There 
might well be a general consent among scholars to consider 
no book of our earlier literature as decently edited, no editor 
as having tolerably fulfilled the obligations which, as such, he 
undertook, where such a glossary as I speak of is wanting. 
It is certain, however, of a vast number of our books, that 



much more laborious to use. Even those among the Parker Society's 
publications, which, as regards the glossary, are edited carefully and well, 
Becon for instance, lie under this fault. 



56 ON SOME DEFICIENCIES IN 

they will never be reprinted, that the facility of entrance 
into their philological treasures which good indexes might 
give will never be afforded. Add to these all those other 
works which I have just noted, that have lately been insuf- 
ficiently edited, with no verbal indexes, or with bad ones, 
and for which the opportunity will certainly not soon occur 
of repairing these errors, and we have a mass of English 
literature, which can only be made available for Dictionary 
purposes through the combined action of many; a dense 
phalanx of books which the desultory and isolated efforts of 
one here and one there can never hope effectually to pene- 
trate. In that most interesting preface which Jacob 
Grimm has prefixed to his own and his brother's German 
Dictionary, he makes grateful and honourable mention of 
no less than eighty-three volunteer coadjutors, who had 
undertaken each to read for him one or more authors, and 
who had thrown into the common stock of his great work 
their several ' symbols/ the results of their several toils; while 
he expresses a confident hope that, as the work proceeds, he 
will enlist many more of these helpers. It was something 
of this common action which the Philological Society sug- 
gested to its members last session ; only that it set before 
itself and them, not a new Dictionary, but what should be 
at once a Supplement to Dictionaries already existing, an 
essential aid and support to Dictionaries which are yet to 
be. It entertained, also, the hope, in which it has not been 
disappointed, that many besides its own members would 
gladly divide with them the toil and the honour of such an 
undertaking. 1 



1 Let me mention here that seventy-six volunteers have already come 
forward, claiming their shares in this task. A hundred and twenty- one 
works of English authors, in most cases the whole works of each author, 
have been taken in hand by them ; and in evidence of the interest which 
the work inspires, I may add that thirty-one contributions, many of 
them, I understand, of very high value, have been already sent in. 
Any reader of these pages, who should feel disposed to join in the work, 



OUR ENGLISH DICTIONARIES. 57 

Only thus can we hope that this work will ever be effec- 
tively done, that we shall ever obtain that complete inven- 
tory of our English tongue, with other accessory advantages, 
which we ought not to rest satisfied until we possess. The 
story in Herodotus is probably familiar to us all of the 
course which the Persians followed, when they proposed to 
make entire clearance of the inhabitants of some conquered 
island, to bring them all within their grasp. An entire 
army would join hand in hand till it covered the breadth of 
the island, and would then in this fashion pass over it from 
end to end, rendering it impossible that so much as one of 
those whom they desired to seize should escape. This 
(Tayrjveveiv, this drawing as with a sweep-net over the whole 
surface of English literature, is that which we would fain 
see ; which we would count it an honour to be the means 
of organizing and setting forward ; being sure that it is only 
by such combined action, by such a joining of hand injhand 
on the part of as many as are willing *o take their share in 
this toil, that we can hope the innumerable words which 
have escaped us hitherto will ever be brought within our net, 
that an English Dictionary will prove that all-embracing 
iravaypov which, indeed, it should be. 



addressing a line to the Secretary of the Committee, Herbert Coleridge, 
Esq., 2, Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, would receive from him a list 
of books unappropriated yet, and all other information he might require. 



INDEX OF WORDS. 



Abandon, 34 
Abyss, 27 
Acme, 30 
Afterwitted, 16 
Amorevolous, 53 
Aloofness, 15 
Analyse, 14 
Apostate, 25 
Archives, 27 
Ardelio, 12 
Aureola, 42 
Awkness, 15 

BlLAND, 31 
Biography, 26 
Bison, 28 
Bog, 14 
Bravo, 29 
Brimly, 18 
Bug, 30 
Bugiard, 53 
Buildress, 19 

Cancel, 21 
Captainess, 19 
Cento, 28 
Chasm, 26 
Chasteling, 20 
Chyle, 27 
Cimici, 30 
Cinder, 21 
Clitch, 14 
Clumsy, 36 
Coaxation, 6 
Coffee, 49 
Committee, 24 
Common sense, 43 
Conculcation, 16 
Consciuncle, 53 
Counterpoison, 32 
Cynosure, 26 



Dade, 54 
Dehonestate, 19 
Delinition, 6 
Demagogue, 26 
Demi-island, 31 
Demi-isle, 31 
Deplored, 36 
Deposit, 29 
Desired, 36 
Diary, 21 
Diatribe, 27 
Docible, 38 
Docile, 38 
Dozzled, 13 
Dwarfling, 20 

Eae-sheiet, 32 
Economize, 25 
Eldern, 20 
Emulus, 12 
Engastrimyth, 31 
Epithet, 27 
Excarnificate, 19 
Expanse, 27 
Ecstacy, 27 
Extirper, 18 

Faeealla, 12 
Fashionist, 17 
Favor, 40 
Fellowfeel, 19 
Firmament, 35 
Fitchy, 17 
Flaite, 13 
Flatteress, 19 
Flowretry, 17 
Flox, 14 
Foggy, 17 
Fumishness, 16 
Furlong, 41 



Gaee, 18 
Getnothing, 22 
Gingerness, 18 
Goll-sheaves, 53 
Good-nature, 44 
Grimsir, 9 

Hazle, 13 
Hero, 26 
Hickscorner, 10 
Hispidity, 17 
Hopple, 13 
Host, 29 

Idea, 28 
Idiom, 27 
Ignoble, 21 
Imager, 31 
Individual, 30 
Ineptus, 39 
Instinct, 43 
Interval, 28 
Interstice, 28 
Intrudress, 19 

Jacksteaw, 10 

Kext, 16 
Kumbix, 11 

Loveling, 20 
Ludibundness, 6 
Lumber, 36 

Machine, 28 
Maleficence, 17 
May-lord, 53 
Medioxumous, 6 
Metal, 35 
Mirificent, 6 



60 



INDEX OF WORDS. 



Mulierosity, 6 
Muauny, 28 

Nasuteness, 16 
Negoce, 40 
Negotious, 40 
Negotiousness, 41 
Niceling, 20 
Nipfarthing, 22 
Noctambulo, 29 

Opeea, 40 
Opime, 6 

Palliabd, 10 
Palmiferous, 6 
Panic, 29 
Parallelogram, 27 
Peninsula, 31 
Penury, 36 
Pervicaey, 18 
Phalanx, 28 
Philtre, 28 
Pickpenny, 22 
Pingle, 14 
Pleasant, 21 
Plunder, 40 
Polytheism, 30 
Priestress, 15 
Pritch, 15 
Prosody, 27 



Prowlery, 17 
Pulke, 14 

QUADEIPAETITIOlf, 

16 

Rex, 12 
Ruddle, 15 

Safe, 38 

Sanguinolency, 17 
Sayman, 16 
Scleragogy, 53 
Scoundrel, 24 
Sculptor, 31 
Secure, 38 
Septemfluous, 6 
Setling, 20 
Snag, 21 
Snig, 21 

Solertiousness, 53 
Sopor, 18 
Sordidity, 17 
Sortilege, 18 
Soveraintess, 19 
Speciosity, 17 
Spectre, 28 
Spendthrifty, 17 
Spinster, 36 
Spong, 13 
Strut, 21 
Subsannation, 6 



Suicide, 40 
Sure, 35 
Swillbowl, 22 
Symbol, 35 

Tea, 49 
Thought, 35 
Timeling, 20 
Tinnen, 20 
Try, 14 
Turntippet, 22 

Umsteoke, 11 
Unactive, 21 
Unease, 33 
Unidle, 33 
Unio, 40 
Unlusty, 33 

Veebalist, 16 

Wallntjt, 41 
Wanze, 15 
Whirlpool, 36 
Wispen, 20 
Witticism, 24 
Wormling, 20 

Yaenen, 20 

Zoophyte, 17 



THE END. 









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